


why is your voice so sonically pleasing to me?

by hearttpoem



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron Legendary Defender, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Band Fic, M/M, Multi, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27816892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearttpoem/pseuds/hearttpoem
Summary: Keith is nearly certain he’s cursed by his ancestors, as his Sobo once eloquently put, from being born by parents with opposing soulsigns. And,nineteen years into life with near certainty he doesn’t have a soulmate, he’s okay with that.Lance can’t wait for the day he’s introduced to the person that was pretty much hand-crafted for him by the universe or whatever higher being is on the other end of soul lines. Just one problem though: he’s stuck with a soulsign that he has no idea what to do with, with it being the most ineligible soulsign he’s ever seen. And, as respectable as he’d like to be to the higher gods or whatever, he is so not okay with that.Or, Keith and Lance think that they’ve got the whole soulmate thing (mostly) figured out, but are up for a rude awakening when they’re forced to meet in the middle after one too many caramel lattes, some collaborative songwriting and social networking, and a few steps out of their comfort zones in more ways than one.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 85





	why is your voice so sonically pleasing to me?

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know how I ended up here, writing this fic and actually posting it, but I’m 40k deep at this point so I guess it’s too late to go back now lol  
> In all seriousness though, I really wanted to post something for my birthday (which is today, December first, lol) so here I am! I randomly got the idea for a song-related soulmate AU and just started writing this like two weeks ago. If it feels weirdly paced or kinda confusing it’s because I literally just ad-libbed this entire thing. And to add to madness, I edited and formatted this entire thing in one night at 4am while eating an egg sandwich so... yeah not my best work but I had fun while writing this so I hope you like this first part!  
> I originally only started writing this with the intention of making a short little one-shot to warm up for writing a longer fic I plan on writing, but apparently I don’t know how to not make everything I write ridiculously long. Either way, I’m really excited to post this tbh because I really tried to expand the entire soulmate idea in this one. I wanted to make soulmates and their soulmarks cultural and genetic, and to explore the different sides of all the possibilities to ithe pros and cons because I haven’t really seen that much in other fics so! I hope it’s enjoyable. Xxx

1

Keith Kogane doesn’t have many fears, but something that’s always worried him is- as he likes to call it- his ability (or inability?) to be tall enough to ride. 

Not literally, of course. He’s not the tallest guy in the world but he’s not _that_ short. It’s more a metaphorical stressor; something that comes and goes in his life but is still there, still prominent enough to keep him up at night or to show relevance when he least expects it. 

In such a sense, he’s always been worried about his ability to measure up. In a more literal sense, he’s always had a concern for being enough. Whether it’s a major or minor concern varies through situations. And whether or not he’s stressing about being _good_ enough or _smart_ enough or something else under that ‘traits-that-are-generally-needed-but-he’s-somewhat-lacking’ spectrum is another story in and of itself. But no matter the details, the problem is still there. With the problem, of course, being that at the end of the day Keith can’t be a thousand percent sure that he’s the person he’d like to be, or that he’s even capable of being that person. 

Not that he lets this fear seep into his daily life _regularly_ . Sure, Keith gets a sense of distress in his gut when he has to step out of his comfort zone or take a leap of faith on himself, but luckily for him those moments come only once in a blue moon. Within his most recent years Keith’s managed to attune his life to a comfortable, limited circle of people and interactions that might seem mundane to anyone that _isn’t_ him, but Keith can’t complain. Not in the places where it matters. So on most days Keith is satisfied, unburdened and able to temporarily ignore his inability to measure up to what he assumes people expect of him. 

Unfortunately, the day Keith meets Lance _isn’t_ most days. 

More than anything, Keith wishes maybe he could’ve gotten some warning. Like, it only seems fair that he should’ve received an omen or heads up that things were about to go so horribly wrong (or right, depending on who you ask) that he wasn’t going to know what hit him. Or maybe there was a sign, but between his overgrown bangs and general lack of perceptivity, it went completely over his head and passed him. 

So when Keith went into band practice one afternoon in early January, snow coating his thick, leather boots and a pair of Beats headphones over his ears doubling as earmuffs, the last thing that was on his mind was that this band practice wouldn’t be any different than others. 

As per usual, his childhood friend Pidge was already there in their usual rented space fiddling on her keyboard, completely transported in her own world as she went through a series of scales. It took several minutes for Pidge to even notice he’d entered the room, and in the meantime he removed his own guitar from its case and began to plug it into its amp accordingly. It wasn’t long before he finally caught Pidge’s attention, was greeted by her, and by then Nyma was already bounding in with her hot pink puffer jacket zipped to her chin in an attempt to fend off the biting winter cold. 

After they had all warmed up, and made quick mundane conversation regarding what they’d done and the general events of their days, Allura was budging through the door with her arms full and her eyes bright, and her usual smile slipping past her thickly woven scarf and across her face. 

“Alright, I know I’m late, but I’ve got drinks from The Five Lions and a new song that I was working on last night that I can’t wait to show you guys,”she exclaimed excitedly as she entered the room. “Anyway, hope I didn’t miss anything.” 

“Not really, I was just complaining about how crazy things have been since the new semester started. It’s like, how am I supposed to focus on my second wave of midterm projects when I’m too busy reminiscing about the ham I had over Christmas break?” Pidge complained while graciously accepting the peppermint hot cocoa Allura offered her. 

“ _Tell_ me about it,” Nyma sighed, twisting in the seat behind her drum set. 

From there the girls went back and forth complaining about their classes and the inhumane amount of work they’d been assigned within the past week since their winter break ended, while Keith sipped on the steaming black coffee Allura had handed him thoughtfully. If he were to be honest, he actually enjoyed his winter break; he’d gotten to go with Shiro and Adam to visit Adam’s parents all the way in Wisconsin, and even now that the break had ended things weren’t much different. He only had two serious classes to do work in, and even then the assignments were never something he couldn’t handle. So instead of joining in with his own set of protests towards the current state of America’s schooling system, he sat back quietly until his friends tuckered themselves out with their complaints. 

“I guess Kogane and I will just have to make out next song about how stupid homework is, huh?” Allura giggled before plugging her bass guitar into an amp that had seen better days, and took out a handwritten copy of the song she’d mentioned earlier. 

From there, practice went as per usual. 

The thing with Keith and his band (or _Allura’s_ band, as she’d argue if asked) is that there was nothing very difficult or trying when it came to them. They were admittedly an unlikely group, between their constantly opposing personalities or their even more glaringly obviously contrasting aesthetics. They shared almost nothing in common, and how they even managed to cross paths Keith was still apprehensive of even though he was _there._ But despite Allura’s long white hair next to Pidge’s ugly yellow rain boots being unsightly to see, let alone be in the same room with, they all managed to get along. And even more than that, they all seemed to have the same desire to play music regularly, but without the pressure of trying to sell out venues or record a sample CD. 

They always made time to practice together, learning new songs or teaching one another new techniques and genres, but not with some higher goal in mind. They sought one another out, in a rented space with horrible heating and even worse air conditioning in the summers, to destress and ignore whatever was past the four walls they practiced in. And between Pidge having four AP classes despite her only being a sophomore, Allura having to balance class and inevitably taking over her father’s business, Nyma’s train wreck of a family and Keith’s… well, Keith’s _everything,_ a break was needed. 

And perhaps that’s why he stayed for once. Not that day specifically, with cold air seeping into their small studio space and causing his pale fingers to redden with frostbite and pressure against his strings. But rather in general. After watching several people come and go during the early years of his life, Keith became prone to picking up and disappearing at the slightest chance in an attempt to dip before he could get attached. To people, to something he thinks he might start to enjoy, to anything really. At the blink of an eye Keith is often slipping through fingers like quicksand, faded and jaded no matter how tightly you try to maintain a grip. 

But when Allura asked him to help her record a cover for her YouTube channel at the start of the school year, he felt inclined to say yes considering she’d spent the better half of the time he’d known her tutoring him out of the kindness of her heart. And when one cover turned into jam sessions with Pidge, and then Nyma worming her way into their trio with her usual unexpected but not unwelcome elusiveness, Keith _didn’t_ feel inclined to leave. For once, he felt as though the group he was surrounded by couldn’t disappoint him. Mostly because he didn’t have any expectations for them, making it nearly impossible to be let down. But even more so, they didn’t have any expectations for him, either. He was there to play the trusted guitar he’d been gifted for his sixteenth birthday and sight read the notes Allura had scribbled on Sanrio themed stationery in the middle of the night before, and that was all he could really ask for. 

And that’s exactly what happened. The next hour was spent with the quartet coveting over harmonies, bridges, and possible lyrics before wrapping up their practice with a song they had worked on before break started. A little past five in the afternoon, things came to a close with rifts in melodies and harmonizing hums crescendoing to silence, only to be interrupted by a loud series of _dings_ erupting from Pidge’s back pocket. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, fishing in her jeans for her cellphone and then checking her notifications. “Thought I put it on vibrate.”

“No worries, I gotta bounce soon anyway,” Nyma answered, already sticking a drumstick in her thick hair. 

“Who is it, anyway?” Allura probed after taking a sip of water, her head tilting slightly in a poor attempt to take a peek at who Pidge was texting. 

“Hunk and Lance,” Pidge replied with a shrug, turning off her keyboard with one hand and texting fiercely with the other. “Apparently Lance really wants Five Guys and he’s in a good mood so he’s willing to pay if any of you guys want anything.” 

Keith can’t deny his ears perked up at hearing this- he wasn’t above spending a Thursday afternoon gorging on salty fries and an overpriced milkshake, especially if it was free. But turning over the invitation a few times in his head, he ultimately decided that he wasn’t up for an outing with Pidge and her friends. 

So when Allura frowns saying she has a shift at the Five Lions, and Nyma comments saying she’s already late for a date with her boyfriend Rolo, it leaves Pidge arching an eyebrow at their residential emo-wannabe and he already has an excuse on his tongue ready to be fired. 

“Hard pass,” he says coolly, cables wrapped and tied and guitar packed. “I’ve got stuff.” Okay, so maybe it’s not a _good_ excuse. But he’s known Pidge long enough to know that she understands what the underlying words, or lack thereof, represent. 

“Seriously?” she groans after a beat, likely realizing that she’s being left to walk alone in the cold for three blocks. “I already know your quote-on-quote _stuff_ is binge watching _Crash Landing on You_ before falling asleep and then waking up just in time for one of your classes, so at least get some free fries and a soda before then for my sake?”

“I’m not really in the mood to meet new people…,” Keith admits, hovering over his guitar case and avoiding eye contact with his friend in favor of eyeing the faded AC/DC sticker on his guitar case. 

“But you already know Hunk. And Lance has been bugging me to meet you since he’s already met Nyma and Allura,” Pidge grumbles, and Nyma laughs while zipping up her coat. 

“He’s not so bad, Keith. Once you get past the awful pick-up lines and his talent for constantly putting his foot in his mouth, Lance is kind of like… a really sweet bimbo,” she says, tossing her emptied coffee cup into the small trash can in the corner of the room and crossing her arms. “A _scatterbrained_ bimbo who still hasn’t finished his part in our APUSH assignment, but still sweet.” 

Nyma’s passive aggressive comments don’t exactly persuade Keith into going anywhere but his room to watch Netflix within the next hour, but within moments he suddenly doesn’t have a choice on the matter. Right when he’s about to tell Pidge that he’ll walk her to the nearby restaurant but isn’t willing to stay, he gets a text from his phone and frowns upon the message he’s received. 

  
  


**_Kashi_ **

_Don’t come home._

**Why…**

_Adam came home early._

**Okay and?**

_…_

_:)_

**Oh**

**Omg I hate y’all**

_I just want an hour with my husband, is that so much to ask for?_

_Especially considering you ate the last of my special K_

**It’s cereal**

_It was strawberry!_

_Anyway, you actually have a place to hang right?_

**No**

**You’re throwing me out on the street**

**I’ll probably die of frostbite or overexposure to smog or smth**

_Good_

**ASFEDGGB**

Bye, have fun!

**If anyone’s having fun I’m sure it’s you**

_BYE_

Needless to say, Keith isn’t happy about the exchange he’s just had with his brother over the phone, but knows better than to try to shift the current flow of his day into something more favorable. By the time Keith has shoved his phone in his coat pocket, he’s already holding back a frown in turn for neutrality, and he ultimately has to suppress a sigh before telling Pidge, “I guess a quick milkshake wouldn’t hurt.” 

Keith actively ignores the way Pidge’s entire face lights up upon hearing this, and he has to bite his lip from smiling back. 

“Great! Lance is kind of scary when he’s happy and Hunk is no help about it, for a second I thought I was just going to have to endure it alone,” she sighs while tugging on large green mittens, her equipment stored away in its usual spot and leaning against the wall.

“Scary?” Keith questions as the group heads outside in a small huddle, their shivers increasing exponentially by the time their boots have traded the indoor linoleum of their rented space for the pavement outside. 

“Not scary per se,” Pidge clarifies after Nyma and Allura have already said their goodbyes and headed in opposing directions, her words coming out in small bouts of breath as she smacks her reddening lips and her cheeks tint with pink. “But he’s a bit much sometimes. Like, he’s always nice and talkative but on days like this it’s a bit overwhelming. Sometimes I forget why we’re even friends, but then he buys me free food with all that niceness and I remember.” 

Pidge punctuates her explanation by pausing in front of the crosswalk they've reached and looking up at the unforgiving sky overhead, gray clouds reading ‘gloom and doom’ and black soot reading that their city has seen better days. 

“What do you mean days like this?” Keith presses once they’re back to walking and Pidge’s face looks a little less distant. The worry in his voice sounds displaced, but underneath his unyielding exterior he knows it isn’t. Keith has had an experience or two (or too many to count) with extroverts, and they’ve never went over all that well with him. And Pidge may pin this burst in personality as ‘nice’, or sweet under Nyma’s description, but Keith has _also_ had plenty of interactions with people he’d deem as fake who come off as sickly sweet but have something a whole lot more sour as an aftertaste to the words they leave you with. 

Keith doesn’t want to believe Pidge would associate with someone who’s two-faced, considering she’s always been a no-bullshit kind of person for all the years he’s known her. But he’s also been met with a bout of surprises in those years he’s known her as his friend, and Keith can’t be sure that one of her friends won’t surprise him as well. So Keith puts on an extra layer of apprehension and a thick shield of cagey as they approach their local Five Guys, an evening snack on their minds and winter frost nipping the tips and corners of their faces. 

“He’s super excited ‘cause some girl he’s been pining over basically the entire school year finally gave him her number. Plus Hunk has a date with his sorta-kinda girlfriend on Sunday so he’s riding on like a romantic high or something,” Pidge supplies helpfully while Keith holds the door open for her to the establishment, and they both saunter in quickly to escape the cold. 

Keith was already nervous, picking at the tips of his fingernails and pinching at the skin underneath as a song rides against the shallow end of his mind. It’s not a song he knows, but somehow it feels appropriate that this nerve wracking moment would come with its own soundtrack. Pidge hears her friends before they see them, making a small commotion at the back of the restaurant, and Keith feels his heart beating out of time as the song in his head gets a little louder. 

He comes to follow Pidge’s surprisingly quick steps all the way to the corner of the restaurant, his chattering teeth hiding behind lips pressed in a tight line as his stomach pooled with a fresh stream of anxiety. Suddenly he’s transported back to grade school when his dad would drop him off at the local elementary school with nothing to his name but a ratty, empty backpack that was twice the size of his head and set determination on his face. He was nervous about the endless possibilities of unfamiliarity then, and he was nervous now. 

Keith already knew Hunk, partially by chance but mostly by association with Pidge, his best friend for the past several years due to family relations. Every now and again, when Keith would stop by her house for a quick game of Overwatch before he had a class or a weekend binging session of whatever TV series they were glued to that month, Hunk would already be there from dropping her off from school or delivering some goods from his parents’ bakery or something or the other. Keith can’t say exactly what it is that makes Pidge and Hunk get along so well, or what makes Hunk want to be the kind of friend that delivers pastries to her on a Saturday afternoon, considering they’re practically polar opposites aside from their shared interest in academics. But then again, Keith isn’t entirely sure how he managed to get on so well with Pidge when they first met when he was still an unforgiving tween with a bad attitude and an even worse haircut. But Keith has learned not to question Hunk and Pidge’s dynamic, in favor of just accepting that Hunk was an exceptionally nice person and that Pidge was willing to let him into her small circle for the sake of his abundance of snacks and warmhearted carriage. 

Lance, on the other hand, was a different story. Pidge wasn’t exactly privy when it came to information regarding her school friends, but on the rare occasion that Lance _was_ offhandedly mentioned in passing during conversation, Keith didn’t pay any attention. He remembers Pidge maybe mentioning that Lance was on a sports team at school, but was it water polo or track? And Pidge may have said he was really passionate about _something_ as a complaint but he can’t recall what exactly that thing was now that it actually matters. Keith never cared much about the finer details regarding Pidge’s friends, under the assumption that they would never become _his_ friends, but now he wishes he had. Approaching the worn booth at the back of the small eatery Keith bites the inside of his cheeks, feeling as though he’s about to bomb an exam he hasn’t studied for. And not for the first time in his life, Keith wishes that there was some sort of Quizlet with ready-made answers on how to go through basic social interactions with half-strangers without looking like a total idiot. 

Just as they approach the table, the singing hanging off the tendrils of Keith’s mind comes to an abrupt stop, he’s greeted with one familiar face and one that’s… no so familiar. 

He assumes said face must be Lance, and goes through the musty files of his brain to try to recall the proper motions for introducing oneself. 

_When was the last time I actually had to meet somebody new?_ Keith wonders, but never really gets to reach a conclusion because before he can even say anything he’s being swept into an unexpected half-hug. 

“What’s up, man! I haven’t seen you in a minute!” Hunk greets with displaced enthusiasm, and Keith can only manage to pat him on the back in response. Keith hasn’t ever really been a huge fan of hugs, even from people he knew well, yet he can’t entirely complain when it’s coming from Hunk. Evidently the guy is a hugger, as he quickly remembers from the other two times he’d met him, and the oversized winter coat and fuzzy gloves he’s wearing don’t hurt his case in making the interaction nice… in its own way. Still, he can’t deny he’s grateful when a wide palm attached to wiry, brown fingers pats Hunk on the back and a fresh voice cuts in.

“Alright, Hunk, don’t squeeze the living daylights out of him, yeesh,” Keith hears, and the joking tone is enough to make him loosen up slightly. At least for just a second. He promptly turns, after Hunk has released him and apologized, to meet a pair of large brown eyes that are already balanced in his direction. 

“Lance.” Keith hears, but the words don’t really register until a large hand is extended in his direction as a salutation.

“Um, Keith,” Keith replies, briefly shaking Lance’s hand before taking a seat at the table just as Lance begins to stand up straighter with a smile. 

“Well, _Keith_ , what’s your Five Guys usual? Lunch is on me.”

Suddenly Keith feels odd about this stranger paying for his lunch, and he didn’t want to have to owe Lance for anything; not even a ten dollar value meal. Maybe it was the way this kid was staring at him with eyes bigger than saucers, or the way he could feel a hot itch under his skin from where his gloved hand had met Lance’s palm so briefly. Or maybe it was just the fact that Keith was having second (well, technically third) thoughts about this entire thing. 

“Are you sure? I can pay for myself…,” Keith offers, but Lance immediately shakes his head.

“No, it’s okay. You can pay next time.” _Next time_ . Keith’s hand was already tingling, but now his entire face was taking turns running hot, then cold, at the thought of there being a _next time_. 

“He’ll take a fry and vanilla milkshake, cheeseburger for me,” Pidge says for Keith, because _clearly_ Keith doesn’t know how to act under these new circumstances, and Lance quickly absorbs the information before bounding off with the order to fetch his friends their meals. 

“What’s up with you?” Pidge asks as soon as Lance is out of sight, and Keith shrugs. 

What _was_ wrong with him? He’d been talking for nearly nineteen years, but suddenly in the presence of this Lance kid his words seem to fail him. And it’s not like Pidge’s friend did something to him or anything like that. It’s just that his gaze held more weight than Keith’s gut could handle, his face stood out to him in a way that actors from an old movie you watched forever ago return to your memory while still remaining nameless, and his voice felt oddly familiar as well. Especially as the song from earlier returns to Keith’s mind, although this time in a quiet hum. 

“Nothing’s up,” Keith dismisses. “Just hungry I guess.” 

Pidge doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t press further as Keith begins to toy with the salt-shaker at their table and Hunk goes into detail regarding the things Pidge had missed at their school’s STEM club that day. He’s glad, too, because he needs a moment to process why he feels so bent so out of shape like the bendy straws at their table. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to get his shit together before Lance returns with their food and drinks, which leaves Keith feeling even more awkward when he’s handed a large vanilla milkshake and can barely muster a quick “thank you.” 

This means Pidge gives him arched eyebrows and questioning glances over the conversation that erupts around the table, and all Keith can do is shrug back at her because he has _no idea why his stomach is in knots_ . He guesses maybe he really _is_ super hungry, so he makes his way through his fries quietly while Pidge runs through her latest accomplishments in Splatoon 2, and Hunk debates whether or not to buy the latest Pokémon game. What this doesn’t mean, however, is that Keith ever really reaches any peace of mind. 

While quietly listening, happy to dip his salty fries in his sweet drink and pretend he doesn’t feel completely out of place, he can’t help but notice that Lance keeps shooting him a look. Whether he’s trying to signal to Keith he has a milkshake mustache, or just making really insistent eye contact, he can’t be sure. But after the fifth not-so-subtle peek in Keith’s direction, it gets really annoying. It’s one thing for Pidge to send him probing glimpses, because at least he knew what said glimpses were about. Keith was being weird, and of course Pidge would notice how tense his shoulders were or how he could barely form a proper sentence; she was his best friend and more than capable of putting two and two together. But Keith _couldn’t_ make sense of Lance’s decisiveness, or why it was even directed at him in the first place.

“ _What_?” Keith eventually snaps over the table, voice low as not to interrupt Pidge and Hunk’s sidebar conversation but still loud enough to be picked up by Lance, who sat across from him. 

“Huh?” Lance replied, face focusing on his veggie sandwich instead of meeting Keith’s gaze as if he hadn’t totally been staring only moments ago. 

“You’re staring,” Keith reports flatly.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” Lance answered, toying with the plastic straw in his Dr. Pepper and using it to know around the ice cubes in his drink. “It’s just… don’t I know you from somewhere?”

_So I’m familiar to him too._

Lance’s words distilled Keith’s original uneasy attitude, even though it didn’t completely erase the sense of annoyance he felt from Lance doing such a haphazard job at sneaking glances. The whole interaction, right from when he walked to the door to their short interactions, had Keith reconsidering his recent line of decision. 

However this time it wasn’t in regards to his ability to get along with this stranger, but about whether or not he even _wanted_ to get along with Lance at that point. Pidge’s friend or not, he was never a fan of people _staring_ at him. Especially not if he was going to do such a haphazard job of sneaking.

Though, he must admit, Lance _did_ seem familiar the more they met eyes across the table in between sips of their drinks and during the short pauses of conversation around the table. Lance felt like perhaps a forgotten acquaintance originally, but now it was a bit more than that. His familiarity wasn’t in a ‘I know you from summer camp in 2012’ type of way, or in the idea that they’d maybe bumped into each other at the mall or something. It was more like they’d met during a time neither of them really remember well- like a shared dream or past life. At a place that’s clouded by something way too metaphysical for either of them to grasp in the back of a fast food restaurant. Not that Keith actually believes in that kind of thing. If he were being realistic, which he often proses to be, then he’d assume that they’d probably met but he simply can’t remember because he’s never been that great with names or faces. 

At least, he _hopes_ that’s the most viable option. 

It doesn’t matter much, however, because before Lance can ask another question or his eyes get a chance to bore holes into Keith’s profile, the conversation is pressing on and Lance is turning his attention back to Hunk and Pidge.

“Thank the gods for happy Lance,” Pidge hums with a burp after she finishes her cheeseburger and rolls up the wrapper in front of her, as if she wasn’t just complaining earlier about how annoying Lance can be when he’s elated.

“I’m always happy, Pidgeon,” Lance corrects, popping open the lid to her half-finished shake to dip in a slim French fry. “Today is just… slightly better.”

“Slightly? You sent me like five voice notes on Snap of just you screaming,” Hunk counters in between sips of his Sprite, and Lance falters a bit between bites. 

“You’re that excited?” Keith questions, as though Pidge hadn’t already filled him in, but almost immediately regrets it when Pidge groans with a shake of her head and sooner than later finds out why. Something seems to flicker behind Lance’s eyes, his demeanor shifting completely as he stops eating mid bite and turns to Keith with a Cheshire grin that reaches either of his large ears.

“Hey, you’d be happy too if the hottest girl at Garrison Tech gave you her number. I didn’t even ask today, either. We just came out of volleyball and swim practice at the same time and we were talking while she waited on her ride, and then she just _gave_ it to me,” Lance explains with a flourish, his food completely disregarded as he sat up straighter in his seat and waved a fry around. 

Keith considers correcting Lance by saying, _no,_ he wouldn’t care if some girl gave him her number unless it was to do his Physics homework, but Pidge beats him to the punch. 

“Not everybody is girl-crazy like you, Lance,” Pidge condemns. 

“And Ezor isn’t the hottest girl at G-Tech, either,” Hunk adds on. 

“Then who is? Shay?” Lance fires back, rolling his eyes. 

“Objectively speaking, probably Nyma considering she won homecoming two years in a row even though she doesn’t even show for school functions and skips class at least once a week,” Pidge observes, and Keith nearly snorts at how she looks to be making actual calculations in her head.

“Speaking of Nyma,” Keith cuts in, turning to Lance, before Pidge can pull the quadratic formula on beauty standards or something. “she asked me to tell you to finish your side of your APUSH project with her.”

“You know Nyma?” Lance questions, eyes snapping wider than golf balls, and Keith has to forcefully turn away to scrub the odd sight from his brain. 

Saying that Keith _knew_ Nyma was a slight understatement- she was basically the person that got him through high school. Well, the person that _would’ve_ gotten him through high school had he actually finished. But she was there through his sophomore year, while Pidge was still in middle school and he couldn’t have her as his best friend during class or lonely lunch periods. So there was Nyma, and at times her on-and-off boyfriend Rolo who usually came with strawberry flavored joints or candy edibles to get the three of them through a hard week. They weren’t exactly a dream team, but they were better than what Keith had as a freshman, which was nothing. Nyma was smarter than she looked, taking sophomore classes with Keith despite her being a freshman, and then junior courses when Keith was in the eleventh grade and she was in tenth. They covered one another between coming late to class or missing periods altogether, and did each other's homework with her being an unsuspected math genius with dyslexia and Keith having a disdain for anything with numbers but a passion for reading and writing. And most importantly, Nyma was able to comfortably find herself at Keith’s apartment when her parents were at each other’s throats again, with Shiro and Adam only offering snacks rather than complaints, and both of them were grateful. 

Their dynamic simply worked, though Keith can’t exactly say how. He didn’t talk to her consistently after leaving the Garrison, only texting her at random intervals or meeting up with her occasionally at their local AMC theater. But he didn’t really set his relationship with her back on track until that year, when Allura mentioned she wanted to start making covers and writing songs regularly, and Keith thought of Nyma by extension. How talented she actually was at the drums he never knew before then, but he’d seen drum sticks in her hair or backpack on several occasions, and she’d told him that she liked to skip class to play her drum set alone when her parents weren’t home to clear her mind. When Allura found out how good Nyma was, and how she’d been playing the drums to “clear her mind” for several _years,_ Keith suddenly went from seeing Nyma every now and again to nearly everyday as they practiced regularly, and suddenly it was like things had never changed with them. 

So yeah, Keith could say he knew Nyma. 

“Um, yeah,” Keith answers after a blink, all of the ways he was familiar with Nyma Kwarteng flashing before him in an instant. “She was like my best friend at the Garrison before Pidge started going there, and I’m in Allura’s band with both of them.”

Lance seems to go a few shades redder, and Keith thinks he sees him ducking his head from the corner of his eye but he can’t be sure. 

“Oh right.” Then there’s a pause in Lance’s entire frame, his body croning over the table as he sips on his drink thoughtfully while Hunk and Pidge engage in a conversation regarding whatever Pidge was planning to do later that day. And then, when Keith thinks that all Lance has to say on the matter has already been said, he adds, “Wait, you went to G-Tech?”

This seems to garner attention of the entirety of the table back to Lance, and Keith sips on the foam of his milkshake with a shrug. 

“Hold on… did you have Thace eighth period?” 

“Yes…,” Keith answers sheepishly, chewing on his straw and feeling exasperated when Lance chuckles breathlessly in response. 

“Oh my _God,_ ” Lance exclaims, fishing for his phone from his backpack and laughing to himself. “I knew I knew you from somewhere, gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t realize earlier.” 

Hunk looks like he’s about to intercept whatever train wreck of thought Lance has set himself on, but said train has already left the station and before anything can be said, Lance is playing a familiar video on his phone. 

It’s so familiar, one that Keith has seen over a hundred times, that he recognizes it immediately. He knows exactly how it goes, and he can recite the play-by-play down to the second. 

The video shakes unceremoniously for the first few seconds, but quickly focuses on two people in the middle of a large crowd in the middle of what looks to be a school hallway. There’s one guy with a stupid brown combover, hair gel galore, yelling at someone with a mop of black hair that Keith’s seen one too many times in the mirror. Right when it looks like Keith, circa 2018 when he was still wearing Demonia boots and band tees, is about to turn around and leave, the guy in the video says something inaudible and Keith quickly turns around to all but yank the color right out of his hair follicles. From there the fight escalates quickly. All the while, the cameraman offers witty commentary through the entirety of the fight, and laughs and cheers come from all angles, until the twenty second video clip comes to an abrupt end. 

Keith feels like he’s living through one of his worst nightmares, though he's not sure how to react. He’d always worried about the day he fought James Griffin coming to haunt him even more than it already has, though he isn’t sure what his options are for a response because this is usually the part of the nightmare where he wakes up. 

“Lance, why would you bring that up?” Pidge shoots with fierce glares, though they fall ineffective when she’s sporting a milkshake mustache across her upper lip, so Lance just laughs while slightly wavering instead of actually thinking of the weight of the video he just showed. 

“What? I thought it was cool, somebody needed to teach James a lesson. He was always such an asshole for no _reason_ , he had it coming. I should be thanking you, really.” Lance says the last sentence with a fond expression aimed towards Keith, and for some reason it annoys him. 

“You’re only saying that because that’s the video that got you all those TikTok followers,” Hunk sighs, sharing an equally perturbed look with Pidge. 

“ _Not true._ It’s the video that blew up and caught people’s _attention,_ but then people actually followed me because I’m devilishly handsome and a natural comedian. Duh,” Lance quips, while Keith inspects Lance’s cracked iPhone that’s seen better days to rewatch the video that’s haunted him for over a year.

“ _You_ filmed this stupid video?” Keith accuses, his voice lower than he’d even realized it could go, and Lance snapped his head in his direction accordingly.

“Um, yes?” 

“You know they used this as evidence of the fight to get me kicked out of the Garrison right?” His tone is dull, but Keith’s thoughts kick into overdrive as the old video plays from Lance’s TikTok on loop. 

He could remember that day so clearly, and yet the moments leading up to him beating the living crap out of James Griffin and _accidentally_ (on purpose) elbowing the Dean of students, Dean Iverson, in the face. Easily said, mistakes were made, words were exchanged, and a meeting with several concerned parents and the council of student affairs was held. Also, needless to say, Keith was seen as unfit for the Garrison's prestigious standards and was booted at the tail end of that semester. 

Which, obviously, wasn’t fine. But it felt all the more worse when the video kept popping up everywhere Keith turned- when he tried to join other local schools, when he wanted to apply for an internship that summer, and even at home. Keith still remembers the memes he saw on Instagram and Twitter that included clips of the video, with captions such as ‘Forget wig snatching, it’s scalping season now’ or ‘My mom after finding a single unwashed dish in the sink.’ 

In summary, the video was inescapable and the hilarity of the memes that came with it were only a _slight_ salve to the embarrassment that came with being expelled and blowing up on the internet in the span of two weeks. And now it was all coming back to him at the ungodly speed of a hundred miles per hour. 

“Wait seriously? But you can barely see your face in the video!” Lance cries, seeming genuinely shocked, and Keith begins to think that he could probably count this kid’s amount of brain cells on his fingers. 

“I don’t think it matters, Lance. Like, ten percent of the school was there, including Iverson,” Hunk frowns. 

“Not to mention not that many kids were sporting goth stompers, it’s obviously him,” Pidge chimes in between bites of the last of her burger, and the genuine distress that washes over Lance’s face in waves almost redeems him for recording the video in the first place. 

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even think about you getting in trouble because of me, I guess I was so excited to see James getting his ass handed to him I didn’t think about what would happen afterwards,” Lance explains, and then goes to make a show of him deleting the video off of his account, as if he wasn’t two years late in doing so. 

Keith thinks of his possible options as for what steps he could take to respond to Lance’s attempt at redemption, and in the end he realizes that there’s only two real routes he could possibly go through. 

He could, obviously, choose not to forgive and forget and just punch Lance. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit he’d thought about finally meeting the person who’d put his face on the internet as some weird alternative kid with anger management issues and questionable fashion, and he always imagined that person would have the same painful fate as James Griffin. But somehow, within the time between Keith’s expulsion and now, the alternative has become the more attractive course of action. 

Keith hadn’t just grown an inch or two physically since attending the Garrison, he’d grown mentally as well. At least, enough so for him to realize that as much as he’d like to slap a freckle or two off of Lance’s face for causing him so much trouble, his fists caused more problems than they solved, and he wasn’t really in the mood to throw down in the middle of a meal anyways. 

So he did one of Shiro’s stupid breathing mantras and chose not to dwell, because it was a whole lot easier to meet people in the middle rather than meet them in the pit. 

“It’s whatever,” Keith sighed after his mental battle with himself. “It was years ago and it’s not like you’re the only one who filmed the fight, your vid just so happened to be the one that blew up. No hard feelings.” 

Lance didn’t seem satisfied, based on the way he frowned, but the conversation didn’t get a chance to linger for much longer. Before Lance could beat himself up about what he’d done as an overexcited sophomore, Pidge was cutting in about her latest AP assignment and the conversation moved on as though nothing had happened.

And Keith liked to think that maybe nothing _did_ happen, based on the way the conversation remained collected and casual leading up to the moment they were all finishing their meals and Hunk was leaving for work. But Lance was making it hard to believe that something hadn’t shifted entirely. And the persistent churning in his gut wasn’t all that forgiving, either. 

“Are you sure you don’t you don’t want me to drop you off, Lance?” Hunk later asks from the driver seat of his van while Pidge buckled herself in the passenger seat, looking comically small as the cloth seats swallowed her and she struggled to even reach the dashboard. 

“Yep, I’m good! You’re already dropping Pidge off, wouldn’t want you to be late for your shift,” Lance answers, waving his hand dismissively, and then turning to Keith from where he stood on the curb. “Besides, Mullet here is gonna walk me to the bus stop, right?” 

Keith bites his tongue to keep from saying something he might regret, especially considering Lance had bought him a second milkshake as an “extensive apology.” Instead, he simply watches as Lance waves Hunk off and then follows him wordlessly up the block as they headed toward the nearest bus stop. 

“So,” Lance began, hands in pockets and words floating off puffs of cold as the chilling January air cut through every syllable. “Are you seriously not mad at me for posting that vid? ‘Cause, like, if you wanted to punch me in the nose or something I wouldn’t blame you.” 

“I’m not mad.” Keith’s words had the grip of chalk, coming out and making sense but only against certain frames and surfaces. Which is to say, they made perfect sense to him. He _wasn’t_ mad. Not about the video existing, and especially not at the guy who had bought him two large vanilla milkshakes. But against Lance’s ears, they didn’t come crisp or clear at all. 

“Alright, well, I’ll figure out how to make it up to you. Just in case you change your mind.” 

“Whatever you say Lance,” Keith comments in between sweet gulps, a shrug rolling off his shoulders without much thought. He knew himself better than to change his mind on something like this, but he wasn’t going to tell Lance _not_ to try to repay him just in case his idea of reparations was more free food. Keith had learned to be above petty violence, but food was always welcome under _any_ context. 

As it turns out, Keith and Lance took the same bus home, which meant that Keith had to endure more meaningless chatter from the overambitious high schooler, but some part of him was telling him that it wasn’t all bad. That Lance wasn’t the _worst_ person to ride home with. 

“So, if you don’t go to the Garrison anymore, what school did you transfer to?” Lance questions after they’ve both settled in middle seats and Keith’s head has settled against the window, despite the cold and frost that’s building up on the opposing side of the cool glass. 

Keith considers telling Lance he’s a dropout, mostly because it’s a force of habit. After being kicked out of the Garrison and being denied entry to all of the other schools in his district, Shiro had offered him the option of taking a gap year until a good option could be found for him. Truthfully, Keith supposes his brother was simply able to detect the minor case of despair he was feeling upon being kicked out of a school he’d worked hard to get into, and the guilt he felt at possibly ruining Shiro’s reputation as a repable Garrison alumni role model didn’t help. 

Meaning the remainder of his junior year and entirety of his senior was spent with him outside of school and busying himself with music and a part time job. It was just this year, when Keith had nearly forgotten about high school altogether, that Adam insisted he attempted to get his diploma via night classes at Olkarion University. 

“Olkarion University,” Keith responds with a shrug, and _feels_ rather than sees the gawk on Lance’s face. 

“No kidding! I’d love to get into Olkarion but I’ll probably end up going to State or UIC or something,” Lance laughs. “But I’m glad you were able to get into a decent college after everything.” 

Keith thinks of clarifying that he didn’t really _get into_ Olkarion University; the school just so happened to offer night classes for most people to get a second chance at a diploma or to get ahead with dual credit courses. And Keith obviously fell into the former for that category. But then again, it’s not like he didn’t think he _couldn’t_ get into Olkarion. It had an acceptance rate of just over thirty-percent, but he’d met Allura at one of his night classes last semester and she’d already received her early acceptance letter to start attending the school as a full time student in the fall. So if she could do it, who’s to say he wouldn’t be a student next year as well? And if that was the case, why did Lance need to know the minor details? 

Instead of clearing up the misunderstanding, Keith asks, “Why do you say that?” 

There wasn’t exactly anything wrong with schools like UIC, but most of the people he knew looked to schools like Purdue or UChicago in regards to local colleges they expected to get into. And maybe that was more of a testament to say students at the Garrison had inflated egos, but he didn’t see the point in doubting yourself, either. 

“I don’t know, I just can’t imagine getting into a school as competitive as Olkarion. Like, realistically speaking, I doubt I’m smart enough for that. I’d have to either retake my SATs like a million times to get a high enough score or win the lottery to bribe the dean of admissions.” Lance laughed at his joke, but under the surface Keith could tell he was dead serious, and if he were to be honest that didn’t sit right with him.

“Didn’t you say you took Thace’s class with me?” Keith spoke, shaking the dredges of his drink and then toying with his straw. “If you were a sophomore when I was a junior, then you were a _sophomore_ taking AP Lang. That’s a class that most seniors don’t even take. Plus, if you’re in APUSH with Nyma, then I’m guessing you know that that class is no joke. Only, like, six people take Sendak’s class a year because not only is he the teacher from hell but he’s super picky about who he teaches. I’m honestly kind of happy I left the Garrison when I did so I wouldn’t have to write that ten paged essay on Theodore Roosevelt’s stupid diplomacy policy.” 

By the time Keith is done talking, he’s left wondering if that’s the most he’s said to somebody at once all week. And when he looks in Lance’s direction, the kid is smiling from ear to ear like a child that’s just won the Danimals sweepstakes contest or something. 

“Thanks,” Lance says, wide eyes on Keith, and the Kogane in question has to turn his head sideways to avoid Lance’s insistent grin. 

“Just stating the obvious. You're way better off than me, I’m sure you could get into whatever school you wanted no problem.” Keith doesn’t know how he feels about Lance right then, but the insistent tingling he feels at the back of his mind gives him a hint. 

The bus ride doesn’t last much longer, but minutes before Keith’s stop Lance asks him if he wants to listen to a couple songs with him and before Keith knows it, his Spotify is connected to Lance’s for a music sharing session and they both have their earphones in, listening to Jaden Smith’s latest single. 

Two stops later, Lance is waving Keith goodbye, and Keith is rushing home to drop off his guitar in exchange for his backpack to make it to his evening classes. 

On the short trike home Lance plays SZA’s 2016 album, and it’s what Keith is still listening to while he quickly whizzes through his apartment, makes sure he has everything he needs for class, and pretends not to notice how Adam and Shiro’s room is closed and more than likely locked (Note to self: get roommates that aren’t in love.)

Keith plays Avril Lavigne’s ‘Let go’ album on his walk to the train station and on his ride downtown. While Keith recharges his CTA card, he hears when Lance plays Alicia Keys’ ‘Element of Freedom’ EP from 2009. Even when Keith is in his statistics class and has his notebook out taking diligent notes, he can still hear the voice in his head singing _‘All at once I had it all/ But it doesn’t mean anything now that you’re gone…’_

All through Keith’s lectures, he hears music ranging from soft hums murmuring Troye Sivan to clear as day singing P!nk lyrics, as if Lance’s Spotify session never ended. And, ironically, it hadn’t ended. Upon coming home and rushing to his room, Keith slumps onto his bed, his cheeks red with unforgiving Chicago winter air and his hair damp from chilling kisses of snowflakes. After dumping his backpack on the floor, and fishing his phone out of his pocket, he checks the small device for any notifications and quickly answers texts from his small group of friends, telling Pidge she doesn’t have to feel bad what Lance brought up earlier and reassuring Allura that he’ll tell her if he needs help with lyrics for her song. 

Being reminded of Allura’s song, he realizes he should work on lyrics for their Monday practice, and pulls up Spotify in hopes to find inspiration. But to his surprise, his Spotify is still connected to Lance’s, and when he gets a hold of his Bluetooth headphones he realizes they’ve been silently playing music. 

He considers leaving the session to play one of his own playlists, but instead decides that maybe listening to one of Lance’s songs will offer him a new theme in lyrics he isn’t used to, and listens without complaint as Lance plays ‘Just Like A Pill’ twice in a row and then ‘Pity Party,’ ‘I Couldn’t Be More In Love,’ and several other songs from varying artists that he hasn’t thought about in years. 

It takes a while for any of the songs to actually strike up an artistic chord in Keith, so in the meantime he listens while doing his homework instead of trying to force himself to write something new, and all the while the voice in his head sings along. At some point he hears songs he can’t remember ever hearing before, but the voice in his head sings valiantly through it all. When Keith plays his own music, the voice in his head stops singing along but instead hums quietly, even when Keith plays his favorite songs. It’s as though he can’t quite catch onto the lyrics of his own favorites, even though they’re songs he’s heard dozens of times from his own playlists, which he finds… weird. But as the hours pass, until he’s nearly done with the last of his assignments, the music still plays. And Keith chooses not to question why Lance is up so late, admittedly enjoying the company. Even if it’s mainly through Biggie and King Princess songs. 

It’s right around twelve in the morning, after Keith has showered and finished his homework, that he considers calling it a night and leaving Lance to listen to his tunes alone. However, just as he thinks to turn his headphones off, Keith hears the song he’d heard looping through his head earlier at the diner, now streaming his Spotify through and he stops in his tracks. He can’t be sure if it’s a mere coincidence that the song Keith heard randomly playing in his head is being played by Lance right then, or if maybe it’s some weird telepathy thing, but either way it gives him an idea as to what Allura’s next song should be about. 

So he takes out the copy of sheet music Allura gave him earlier, and begins to write a fresh verse on the back. 

_I don’t know if it’s all in my head, or maybe it’s just an extension of me and you…_

_\- -_

  
  


The Thursday following Keith and Lance properly meeting for the first time, Keith suspects that maybe that’ll be the _last_ time he sees him for a while. And it only makes sense, right? Despite them having mutual friends, it’s not like their schedules exactly match up. When Keith was waking up for the day, oftentimes around eleven or twelve, Lance was already at school heading to lunch. After Lance got out of class, he had swim practice for the next hour or so on most days of the week, while Keith had band practice and then evening class. Except on Fridays, of course, but everybody who knew Keith understood that he was simply unavailable on Fridays. Point blank period. So there was no getting around that Keith and Lance didn’t have time for one another from Keith’s perspective; not when Keith was already filling up his free time with nights with Matt and Pidge at the Holt residence, or lunch dates with Nyma when she was skipping class, or study sessions with Allura. He thought he didn’t have time for Lance, and Lance likely didn’t have the time of day for him, either. Keywords: he thought. 

Not long after their first Spotify session together, Keith decides that he actually likes Lance’s music taste. It’s a lot different from his own, with Rascal Flatts and Dan + Shay being traded in for Ciara and Florence + The Machine, but it’s good all the same. They even meet eye to eye on some artists, like Steve Lacey and Omar Apollo, with them being artists whose songs litter both Keith _and_ Lance’s main playlists. So without much deliberation, Keith follows Lance’s Spotify account, and to his surprise Lance is already following him as well and has liked his most recent list of songs. 

Which of course makes it all the more easier for Keith to decide that he doesn’t want to actually exit the shared streaming session. So instead of unpairing his account with Lance’s, he lets the songs Lance wakes up with early in the morning wake him up as well, even when it’s One Direction one Wednesday evening at 5:30 AM. And during the afternoons when Keith usually listens to Green Day while doing his chores in the time between band practice and his first class of the day, he listens to Vera Blue or Journey while Lance assumedly takes the bus home. 

He can’t say when he’ll see Lance again, but for the next week it seems like Lance is there in spirit as the voice in his head singing along to every other song, or skipping songs when Keith tries to play Nickelback. 

So, when Keith runs into Lance that next Friday he isn’t all that surprised to see him, because it’s like Lance has been with him partially since the week before. It’s more or less that he’s surprised to find that not only is Lance _happy_ to see him, but he’s also prepped with the idea that he’ll start seeing Keith regularly. 

Fridays, for well over a year, have been the days that Keith has had at his disposal. Usually they leave him worn and tired, for reasons that most people don’t know, but this Friday his usual activities have run short, and he still has the energy to actually be a functioning human being. This means, when he catches Lance reading alone at a table at Woodson Library, seemingly lost in the contents of whatever book he’s absorbed in, Keith doesn’t second guess himself about saying hi. 

He can’t remember the last time he went out of his way to talk to someone, especially someone he doesn’t know well, but Lance woke him up with ‘Party in the USA’, and it’s hard to _not_ be in a good mood after starting your day with Miley Cyrus. 

“Studying hard?” Keith questions after approaching Lance’s table, and strangely enough Lance doesn’t jump up or snap his head in Keith’s direction. Instead he looks up slowly before smiling, as if he’d already been expecting Keith to approach him any second. 

“Hey, Mullet,” Lance coughs, his voice rugged, and the sharp decline in his voice’s usual octave is enough to distract Keith from the unfavorable nickname. 

“What happened to your voice?” he questions, taking a seat from across Lance, and setting his stack of books on the table. 

“I caught a cold I guess. Apparently swimming everyday in the middle of the winter isn’t that great of an idea,” Lance laughs, only for him to start coughing and he quickly covers his mouth with an elbow. It’s then that Keith takes note of the small packet of tissues next to Lance and the red nose and eye bags the teen in front of him is sporting, and Keith frowns. 

“Then what are you doing here?” Keith prods, and Lance shrugs. 

“My parents went to work and my siblings are at school, and I get antsy when I’m bored so… here I am.” Lance turns a page in the book he’s reading, and Keith hums in understanding. “What about you?” 

Lance nods to the guitar case strapped to Keith’s back, and Keith immediately feels his face heat up as he scrambles for an answer.

“Oh, um, they didn’t have the book I was looking for at the Blackstone Library so I thought I’d try here. But isn’t this kind of far out from where you live?” Keith rushes his words, originally not planning to question Lance much but wanting to push the conversation from why _he’s_ so far from his house. 

“I live near here,” Lance shrugs, suppressing a sneeze. “My house is just off the Dan Ryan.”

“No wonder you wake up so early,” Keith observes, recalling the way Lance’s Spotify had a tendency to ring to life before the sun had even fully risen. “Isn’t that kind of a far commute for school?” Even though half of Keith’s classes were AP courses that he easily streamed through by the time he left the Garrison, he hated school with a passion. On most days it felt like a chore, and he simply couldn’t imagine waking up at the ass crack of dawn and traveling across the city just to sit at a desk for hours on end. 

“Sure, if it was just any school, but I worked hard to get into the Garrison,” Lance frowned, flipping one of his pages. “Besides, it’s not that bad. I just take the Green Line and then the bus for a couple stops. I’ve been doing it for four years so it’s like muscle memory at this point.” 

Keith tapped against the wooden table in front of them for a minute, nodding solemnly. As if it was just yesterday rather than half a decade ago, Keith could still recall the relentless application process that he partook in as a pre-pubescent teen to apply to the Garrison, including the rigorous studying and unforgiving tests. It honestly had made him genuinely excited as a kid when he got into the school he’d worked so hard for, and perhaps if his freshman year had been a little less lonely and painful he’d have a similar outlook on school as Lance. So he doesn’t argue, but rather picks Lance’s brain about what he’s doing.

“What are you reading?” Keith has never been much of a mavent for small talk, but he can’t deny that Lance looks completely indulged in whatever’s on the pages in front of him, and it makes a bookworm like Keith a little more than curious. 

“Oh, it’s this great book I picked up about the history of soulmates, it’s so good,” Lance offers, a smile spreading across his face like butter melting in a pan despite the cracking in his voice and the exhaustion in his eyes. 

It’s obvious, from the way Lance goes on to explain the contents he’s read so far, that it’s a topic he’s undeniably interested in. And it makes Keith’s face plummet to the soles of his shoes. 

There’s not that many factors of life that grate and shred at Keith’s nerves, much too many people’s surprise. Sure, Keith has a general disdain for a lot of things like loud children or clothes that aren’t some shade of the grayscale. But there’s only one thing that actually, visibly upsets him without fail every time it’s mentioned: soulmates.

If asked why, he’d likely say that that’s just how he’s wired; everyone has something that doesn’t sit well with them, like clowns or cottage cheese. For him, it’s the idea that everyone has somebody waiting to love them, only a soulsign away. He wishes he was unaffected by the existence of such a thing and indifferent like some people, or brought to elation from the thought that there’s someone in the world out there that was made just for you. That unconditional love and happiness is promised, not a privilege. But it’s not a comfort or even just a fact of life for Keith. It’s an obnoxious reminder of things he wishes he didn’t have to think about. 

“You should take this copy, it’s really interesting,” Lance comments, pushing the book towards Keith. 

“Aren’t you reading it?” Keith inquires, frowning. A part of him squirms as he looks at the cover, reading _Souls and Solstices: The History of the Universe Pairing Mankind,_ and he tries to pretend he doesn’t feel his mood slowly dampening. 

“I have the Spanish version at home, so I just picked up this copy to see if the English author notes were different. But trust me, it’s a great read.” Lance falters a second, before shrugging a bit. “Even if you don’t like soulmates.” 

“I don’t have anything against the idea of them,” Keith defends, adding the offered book to his stack. _It’s just that I don’t like what they represent._

“Good!” Lance sniffles excitedly. “We can talk about it the next time I see you.”

“Next time?” Keith questions. He doesn’t know what his exact relationship status with Lance is, or if he even wants to know him much at all, but it’s not because he dislikes the brunet in front of him. It’s just that he hadn’t considered them being more than friendly acquaintances was an option. 

“Yeah, I’ve been craving Nando’s all week. What are you doing tomorrow?” 

Keith looks at the book sitting atop the books he’d picked out for himself, and frowns. There’s only a handful of possible options for things he could offer for a response, and he skims through them quickly although he already knows what he’s going to say before he even thinks about it. 

“Sorry, I’m busy all weekend. And I actually should be going soon so… see you.” Keith only hesitates for a second, but it’s not enough for him to give Lance the opportunity to get a word in. 

He’s sure he likely comes off as disagreeable or evasive from the way that he skips away from Lance before Lance can get a word in, but he can’t help it. While quiet spaces and being bored might make Lance tense, just the slightest mention of soulmates makes Keith squeamish and feel as though he's being set up for a disposition he never asked for but can’t escape. 

So, he can’t say he’s excited to hang out with Lance anymore with the knowledge Lance reads about spirit ties in his free time. What if he asks Keith his genuine opinion on the entire ordeal? Would he have to lie in that situation? Would Lance be willing to take the truth, with the truth being that Keith hated the thought of prepackaged moments in life? Or would Lance become upset and argue?

Keith wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to risk the chance of the latter. So instead of admitting that he wasn’t doing anything but homework and binging Buzzfeed Unsolved with Pidge over the weekend, he lied and headed home as quickly as he could. And at the time it didn’t seem so bad; it’s not like Lance _knew_ he was lying. 

But late that night, while emailing Allura some chords he’d come up with the night before, he noticed the book Lance had given him and felt a slapping pang of guilt for lying. 

And he pays for it in the morning when Lance wakes him up at 9:00 AM with the Jonas Brothers. 

\- -

Everyday for the next week, Keith feels a sense of guilt he hadn’t realized he was capable of feeling and he absolutely hates it. 

It’s not like he never lied before; hell, he lied at least once a week to Shiro and Adam about not being the one who ate the last of the Special K cereal. But for some reason, it all but haunts him that he fibbed to Lance. Maybe it’s the book that taunts him from where it sits on his desk, and then continues to do so even after he shoves it in a drawer because he’s tired of the remorse he feels from looking at it. Or maybe it’s the way he feels embarrassed everytime he checks his synced Spotify and sees that Lance is already playing some song or the other, and for some reason he feels like he’s invading on something private. Like that week of shared music was just a fluke, and Keith isn’t good enough to listen to Lance’s Lady Gaga marathons after blatantly lying to his face. 

Something about the entire affair doesn’t seem right. 

He doesn’t think he’ll get a chance to redeem himself either. By Tuesday of the consecutive week, Keith is sure he’ll have to deal with the fact he lied to avoid dealing with his personal beliefs just because he _assumed_ Lance was one of those soulmate obsessed freaks that spend all their time hoping their soulmate pops out of thin air or something. But apparently Lance is simply full of surprises. 

Coming into his group’s studio that Tuesday afternoon, Keith is sporting a headache from overthinking his moral dilemma and considering asking Pidge for Lance’s number in an attempt to repair whatever rift he created that past Friday. But instead of coming in and seeing Pidge as per usual, there’s none other than Lance in Pidge’s chair, spinning around aimlessly and humming something under his breath. 

Keith pauses the song he was listening to over their Spotify session, and just like that Lance is snatching out one of his headphones and looking up as if a ghost paused his music. 

“Oh, hey Keith!” Lance greets, and a part of Keith feels as though _Lance_ is the ghost. Because, well, it’s a little more than weird to find the person that’s been his mind all week in his safe space. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks without second thought, his voice coming a bit harsher than he’d initially intended, though Lance remains unphased. 

“I wanted to talk to you, and Nyma and Pidge told me to wait here while they went to the corner store to pick up some snacks sooo…” Lance briefly does a pair of jazz hands, and Keith rolls his eyes before removing his guitar case and coat. 

“Talk about what?”

“Well, for starters, I want you to know that the book I lended you is due in the library in a week. So, like, give it back before then.” Keith offered a dull look in response, and Lance laughed. “Okay, okay, I _also_ wanted to say I figured out how I can, like, make it up to you for getting you kicked out of school.” 

“Lance-” Keith starts, only for Lance to wave a hand dismissively. 

“Just hear me out! I know you said you weren’t mad at me but, like, _I’m_ mad at me so let me repay you by helping you get famous or whatever. Or, like, let me _try_ ,” Lance pleads, face all frowns and knitted eyebrows and well… Keith can’t help but at least listen to his preposition. 

“Get famous?” Keith didn’t really like attention; for as long as he could remember, the shadows and backgrounds had been his friend, and the one time he _had_ caught people’s attention it didn’t exactly go over smoothly. It’s the reason he read alone in the library given the off chance and why he took a day out of the week to separate himself from his usual circle. Social interactions were tiring, or any interaction really, and he would avoid it if he had the opportunity. But Lance seemed set on just the opposite for Keith. 

“Yeah, think about it! If you got popular from your skills, nobody would ever think twice about that stupid video I filmed because all the search results would be for like the Grammy’s you’ll win and stuff. And as you probs know, I have a pretty decent Tik Tok following,” Lance laughs, puffing out his chest slightly, and Keith shakes his head while Lance continues. “So I’d have no problem promoting the band. You know, like charity work for my college applications maybe. And Pidge showed me the covers Allura uploaded on YouTube and you guys are _so_ good but you only have like two videos. Imagine how many more views you guys would get if you uploaded regularly and had a page on, like Tik Tok and Twitter or something!”

Keith thinks about all of this information for all of two seconds before making his decision, and has to keep from laughing at Lance’s enthusiasm.

“I don’t want to get famous, and I don’t think the girls want to either. We just play for fun.” 

Lance sits up in his seat as Keith begins to plug his guitar in its amp and then go through a series of scales, and it takes Lance a minute or two before finding his footing and coming up with a reply. 

“Sure you’re not scared it won’t work?” 

Keith pauses for a second, before returning back to his guitar. “You sure have a lot of energy to bug me for somebody who’s supposed to be sick.”

“I’m all better,” Lance corrects, a smug look on his face. “It’s a wonder what a little VapoRub and Sprite can do. And I’m going to assume based on the way you’re deflecting that I’m right about you being scared.” 

“I can do whatever I want, and I definitely can get more followers on tictac or whatever than you,” Keith answers, plucking at his G string with unnecessary force and shooting daggers in Lance’s direction. 

“I believe you. You’ve already got the Keith Urban haircut and, um, unique sense in fashion. I’m sure you could blow up overnight. But I guess we’ll never know, huh?” 

Okay. So here’s the thing: Keith _knows_ when he’s being baited. It’s an art he mastered long ago as a child to survive his days under the care of his heedless father and, later in life, his less than tolerant grandmother. It’s how he bypassed the multiple hardships he endured at a young age that always made him come out on the other end as a different person, though he can’t say if it was all worth the character development. Keith knows his life was hard, but he supposes it would have been a lot harder had he not picked up a thing or two about reverse psychology and its execution. 

So, yeah, Keith knows when someone is framing words just _so_ under a light that makes things mirror off as one way when it’s just the opposite. But that’s not to say that he can _resist_ hanging fruit, even if he’s self aware and knows what he’s being presented with isn’t as it seems. 

“Alright, fine,” Keith resigns, resisting the urge to take up his usual stance of crossed arms when feeling defensive. “What do you want me to do?” 

“Do what you’re good at; just play,” Lance says, and before any more words can be exchanged Lance is whipping out his phone.

“Play what?” 

“It doesn’t matter. Just the first song that comes to mind.” 

The first song that comes to mind is the song that Keith had been listening to regularly, and by extension it was the song he’d been learning the difficult rifts and bridges to in his free time. But it didn’t get stuck in his head until recently, when Keith played it by chance around the start of his virtual music sharing experience with Lance, who seemingly became obsessed with it. Lance played it at least two or three times a day, sometimes on repeat, causing the song to get stuck in his head. Early in the morning or right after a class the voice in Keith’s head would be singing the chorus, fumbling over the unintelligible lyrics, and by that Tuesday it was the song Keith thought of regularly. 

So, right when Lance presses record, Keith belts out the bridge to ‘Kiwi’ by Quarters of Change, and plays to the very end of the song. By the time he’s finished, his fringe has flocked low to hang stiffly over his eyes, and he’s suppressing a stiff laugh upon realizing the notes he’d been working on for weeks had just effortlessly flown out of him like PopTarts from a toaster. And damn, his fingers that had already been burning from the cold were red and on fire, indents galore, but he was happy all the same and admittedly impressed with himself. He’d never imagined he’d be able to play the song so easily, like second nature or like he’d wrote the song himself, when he’d struggled with it so much earlier. But apparently he’d underestimated himself, and maybe his friends had as well. 

When he looks up, fingers sore and ears ringing loudly, Pidge and Nyma are standing in the doorway with their arms loaded with varying sweets and drinks, and their faces even more loaded with genuine shock and disbelief. 

Keith frowns, pushing his fringe away from his face and sighing. He wasn’t sure what their reactions meant, but he didn’t appreciate the attention and it reminded him all of the reasons why he _didn’t_ want to be under the public eye for scrutiny. But then he looks at Lance, brown eyes completely swallowing him from where he stands in the small room, and he supposes that maybe there’s worse forms of attention. 

\- -

Things move quickly following that Tuesday afternoon. The exact sequence of events, Keith wouldn’t be able to repeat because what _actually_ happened is hard to remember. There was a flurry of compliments from all parties in the room, causing Keith to burst into a flame of burning blushes, and luckily the conversation is redirected when Allura enters the room. From there Lance pitches his idea of possibly giving the band a proper social media platform, and to Keith’s surprise she’s all for it. 

“I’ve been meaning to post regularly on YouTube, but I just haven’t gotten around to editing the last few videos I recorded because of school and working at the Five Lions,” she explains, and that’s how Lance ends up volunteering him and Keith to become a team for working through their band’s internet identity.

“Shouldn’t we have a name at least, then?” Nyma asks, running a hand through her thick blonde locs and Allura frowns. 

“Okay, so, funny story,” she starts, wrapping a long chocolate finger around one of the tendrils of hair framing her face. “I kind of promised Coran a few years ago that if I ever started a band he’d get to name it and, well, apparently he took that very seriously.”

“Meaning what?” Keith questions, wary of this spout of news. Keith didn’t know much about Allura’s eccentric uncle other than he ran a local cafe called the Five Lions, and he hadn’t thought his knowledge regarding the man would ever need to extend farther than that. But as per usual, Keith was coming up to be wrong beyond belief. 

“He wants us to be called Sixth Lion.”

“But there’s four of us,” Pidge points out. “And what’s his obsession with lions?” 

“I’m not sure,” Allura shrugs. “But I’m not about to be the one to tell him we’re not calling ourselves that if you guys don’t like it.” 

“It could use some work,” Lance muses from his seat. “But I like Coran and trust his judgment so it’ll do for now.” 

From there, things only grow more chaotic as plans are made. Pidge mentions she has no problem using her own equipment for filming and editing videos, and Nyma mentions her ability to network social media accounts as well as availability for coming in for extra practices. Allura even throws up the possibility of filming a music video at her house, the infamous Altea mansion that she was all too elusive about, and the words exchanged from there grows tenfold. 

All in all, it ends up being a very productive Tuesday. And by the end of it, Keith feels like he just ran three miles in ten minutes, although most of the group practice was spent brainstorming.

By five that evening, Keith is running slightly late for his first class of the day, but luckily for him Pidge’s older brother, Matt, happens to be at home and is willing to give Keith and Pidge a ride. 

“Damn, he can’t even wait ten minutes before texting me,” Pidge grumbles into the screen of her phone from the backseat of Matt’s old Toyota Celica several minutes after practice has ended, Allura and Nyma have started walking home, and Lance has seemingly made his way to the bus stop, 

“Who is it?” Keith questions, raising his voice over Matt’s loud music, trying not to get annoyed with the guy that’s letting him hitch a free ride. 

“It’s Lance. Apparently he forgot to ask for your number again and wants me to give you his. That okay?” Pidge clarifies, flipping her phone screen to show him her most recent messages between her and her peer. Keith takes a moment to glance over the conversation, and can’t help but blink rapidly at the desperation from Lance’s end shown through his use of all capital letters, excessive emojis, and his opening statement being a keyboard smash. It makes it more than a little hard to say no, so before he knows it Pidge is giving him Lance’s number and he’s shooting Lance a quick text.

**773-XXX-XXXX**

**Hey**

**It’s Keith**

_ADEFCFf_

_Pidge gave you my number!!_

_Ngl she’s so mean i thought she wouldn’t :”)_

_But i come bearing good news!!!_

**?**

**_Bitchufamous.jpg sent_ **

  
  
  


More than a little unexpectedly, Keith receives what looks to be a screenshot of what looks to be a video of him from earlier. At first glance he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to take from this, other than that Lance has already managed to post the video, but a slur of numbers swiftly catches his interest. Under the big red heart that Keith assumes represents people who have liked the video, there’s already four thousand hits. Meanwhile there’s sixty comments, and a little over twenty shares. He isn’t sure what to say, so he doesn’t really _say_ anything.

  
  


**???**

_IK!!!_

_i just immediately posted it right after recording, no editing or anything,_

_and that’s what i open my phone to!_

_Apparently the Tik tok algorithm likes mullets…_

**It’s not a mullet**

_We can discuss the finer details Wednesday_

**Tomorrow?**

_Yah lol, that’s when I have a half day for school_

_Meet you at the Five Lions at 1 >:D _

**Ok…**

**What’s a “ >:D” ?**

_Omg…_

  
  
  


Keith isn’t quite sure what to make of the short conversation, or the knowledge he gains from it, but it definitely keeps him up that night. He can’t say he _hates_ the idea of random strangers seeing him online, but the last time that happened it didn’t have the best results. And somehow he’s ended up being Lance’s… friend? He’s put two quarters into a gumball machine and gotten a jawbreaker, which is to say he’s ended up with a whole lot more than he can chew. 

This causes Keith to stay up for half the night, not even looking at his homework after returning home from his night classes. Instead, he takes a long shower and slumps into his bed, trying not to overthink the possible events to come in the morning. But really that’s _all_ he can think about. And the small voice in his head doesn’t exactly help, either. It sings a series of songs softly, almost a whisper in the night but still loud as ever in Keith’s brain.

By the time dawn hits, Keith is just barely getting some actual shuteye. Not that the feeling of tranquility lasts for long. Early in the morning, Lance plays Queen from their synced Spotify, and Keith nearly falls out of bed from being rattled awake while already on edge. 

He can’t get to sleep afterwards, and doesn’t want to risk sleeping in too long and flaking out on Lance, so he decides to call it quits by trudging into the bathroom at seven in the morning. 

“You’ve been getting up early lately,” Adam observes from their apartments’s kitchenette, coffee in one hand and his eyes scanning the Twitter app on his phone from behind his thin set of spectacles.

“Got a new alarm,” Keith snorts, rolling his eyes to himself.

“It’s nice seeing your face before noon for once,” Adam admits, his words way too honest for them to be the first few things he says so early in the morning. “If you’re going to start waking up this early, you should go on morning runs with your brother again. He says he misses you complaining the entire time, it made it easier for him to stay awake.” 

As if on cue, Shiro walks through the door, empty water bottle in hand and a fresh sheen of sweat lining his brow. 

“Mornin’,” he breathes rather than says to his husband, and then eyes Keith standing in front of the fridge with interest. “What’re you doing up so early, Kira? You got home pretty late.” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Keith admits while Adam takes a sip of his tea and Shiro grabs himself a new water from the fridge. “Plus I kind of have plans this afternoon.” 

Keith watches as his brother and Adam share a _look,_ an expression they’ve made one too many times and increasingly so over the years, and now early in the morning it’s making a comeback as bold as ever. But he’s too tired to analyze what the look means this particular time, so instead he makes himself a bowl of Lucky Charms and sets himself at one of the seats in front of their kitchen island. 

“Okay,” Shiro half-says and half-snorts, trading off his shared perplexed expression with Adam for a bemused look. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother? The Kira I know doesn’t get up before noon for _anything_ last I checked.” 

“Yes I do,” Keith tries to argue while measuring out the perfect marshmallow to cereal ratio on his spoon. 

“No, you really don’t,” Adam cuts in, failing to fight off a laugh. “A couple weeks ago the toaster oven caught on fire, the fire alarm went off, the neighbors came in to check on us, and you slept through _all_ of it.”

Keith frowns deeply, admittedly not remembering the scene. If it weren’t for the black spot on the counter from where their old toaster oven used to be, Keith wouldn’t even believe his brother-in-law’s words. But he knows from the way Shiro and Adam are full-on chuckling now that they’re both right, and Keith clinks his spoon against his bowl before giving up on eating.

“Okay, so I like to sleep in. But I have band stuff to commit to today so…,” Keith mumbles. It’s enough for Adam and Shiro to let the topic drop off at that, with them both understanding that Keith took music more seriously than anything else, and that if he would be willing to wake up early for anything then it’d be music related. And Keith’s grateful they don’t press him for more information, because he can’t be sure he’d have anything more to offer. He was under the prose that Lance was supposed to be helping him with popularizing Sixth Lion (name under construction, may he add) but he didn’t know how to explain how or why. He wouldn’t even know how to explain who Lance _was_ if asked, because hell if he knew anything of substance about the kid. So, as to be deduced, when Adam leaves for work and Shiro follows soon after, Keith is thankful few words were exchanged. 

The now empty house leaves him with the opportunity to relax and have a clear mind by the time he’s making his way to the Five Lions to see Lance, and boy does he need the opportunity to filter his headspace. Prior to Adam and Shiro’s exit, he went through at least three stages of grief, and each was tinted with a hint of anxiety as waves of nervousness flashed over him. Just like the Thursday he met Lance for the first time, he was second guessing himself, and it caused him to change his outfit twice only to go back to what he was originally wearing, and then he sat at the edge of his bed and thought over all the possible ways he could totally screw things up with Lance. And it’s not that he was exactly desperate to have Lance as a friend, but if he could prevent any awkward interactions he would definitely prefer that over the latter. 

It wasn’t until Adam and Shiro were long gone, and Keith had nearly worn a path into the carpet of his room from pacing that he face plants into his bed and sighs heavily. 

_Since when do I care so much?_ he wonders _,_ and the question sits limp and unanswered on his mind for several beats because he can’t give himself a response due to there not _being_ one. Keith’s a lot of things, but an approval-seeking nervous wreck has never been one of them. At this realization, he’s left empty handed on what to think or how to act, and so he stays resting there on his comforter with his brain going ‘ _loading, loading, loading…’_ as he searches the database of his mind to find some sort of possible conclusion. 

He never gets a proper result, but what he _does_ get is an unexpected text message. Just when he’s reached the thicket of his thoughts, heavy jungles of insecurities and things he usually doesn’t acknowledge, his phone spurs to life from his bedside table with a loud vibration and it kicks him out of his own head.

**Lance**

_At the 5L! See u soon :D_

Keith isn’t sure why he stares at the message for five, ten, and then an additional twenty seconds before shooting back a quick response of “K,” but he _does_ sit there reading Lance’s words longer than necessary. Even after he’s turned off his phone, slipped his feet in chunky winter boots, and wrapped himself in a bulky coat he’s on edge. 

He feels scatterbrained and restless somehow, like an unprepared flightless bird being pushed to the edge of an aging branch and being expected to fly. There’s a chance that maybe he could soar- in his interactions with Lance, in his future relations in general. But at the end of the day Keith is a penguin in a world of gulls, where everyone seems to be boundless and unhinged while he’s anchored to the ground and left looking up from down below. Or even worse, a fish out of water in a world of birds. And it’s always been that way; with him a couple feet behind, and several pegs lower than everyone else. But at the same time, fish could dive where birds could soar. So maybe, while he isn’t all that great in some ways, he can still outshine in others. Right?

Keith is still coveting over this when he enters the Five Lions, his face red at all exposed rims and borders, and his nose cold enough to produce its own icicles. He’s just barely blinked away the snowflakes from his eyelashes when Lance is flagging him down with a lanky arm at the middle of the cafe, a wide grin spread across his face as he sits at one of the taller two-seater tables. If Keith’s face wasn’t already red from the outside chill, his face would’ve flushed at being waved down with so much aggressive excitement. 

He quickly makes his way to Lance, barely even getting the chance to wipe his shoes off at the door mat, and he’s glad he didn’t think to hesitate, or he’s sure Lance would’ve burst by his ridges and joints. Taking a seat at the cherrywood table, paper scattered about and drinks and confections emanating warmth against their coasters and plates, Keith notices how Lance’s eyes are more pupil than iris and his grin is so gaping it’s nearly sliding off his face. It’s overwhelming, to say the least. 

“Hey, glad you got here okay,” Lance greets easily, his fingers tapping rapidly against the table’s wood as he leans forward. Keith doesn’t even get the chance to explain that the distance between the Five Lions and his house is hardly a walk to think much of, even in the middle of January, but Keith doesn’t get the chance to say as much before Lance is surging forward with conversation and pushing a drink in Keith’s direction. “I got you a coffee, by the way. Pidge told me your usual is just a plain black coffee, but that’s kind of gross- no offense- so I got you a caramel latte. And then I realized maybe you possibly haven’t had breakfast yet so I got you a walnut brownie, but _then_ figured you may have a nut allergy so I also got you a matcha muffin just in case.” 

Lance speaks so quickly, Keith is still trying to figure out what’s wrong with black coffee when he realizes that more than half of the treats on the table are for him. And then it takes an additional billow of time before he comes to the conclusion that Lance is awaiting a response.

“Oh…,” Keith whispers, eyes wide as he accepts the drink Lance is offering his way. “Thanks. But I thought next time was on me?” 

Somehow, Lance’s mannerisms grow tenfold in confidence and he looks more comfortable. “ _Next_ next time then,” he offers, and Keith furrows his eyebrows even though he nods anyway. 

He feels as though he’s being left out on an inside joke, though Lance is extending the punchline to him, and the smirk Lance is sporting doesn’t ease his nerves much at all. Neither does the unsubtle ringing in his ear. 

\- -

  
  


Keith isn’t sure what he expected of an afternoon with Lance, regarding his band or otherwise, but what he experiences is definitely… _different._

First, second, and maybe even third impressions of Lance didn’t seem to do him justice, because the person Keith is forced to converse with under blinding yellow lights next to frosted windows plastered with coffee special advertisements seems to contrast heavily against the kid who recorded a viral fight video two years ago. But if you asked Keith exactly _what_ it was that gave him this feeling of stark displacement between the two impressions he’s been met with, he wouldn’t know what to say. 

Maybe it’s the way that Lance comes off as all business while Keith is still just trying to taste his brownie, shuffling away the papers that are already loitering across the tabletop and replacing them with a blue spiral notebook. “Sorry, don’t mind the mess, thought I’d knock out some homework while I waited,” Lance begins, also taking out a pen. “But last night after I got home, I went through TikTok and Billboard top 100 to check out some of the most popular music trends and audios, and I _think_ that if you did a couple covers of these songs to gain attention, at least one of your vids are bound to go viral.”

The thought of learning songs based on popularity rather than Keith’s ability to resonate with them doesn’t sit well with him, but he can’t help but listen quietly as he tastes his latte. As much as he’d like to remind Lance that he didn’t really want to blow up anyway, and that if anyone from the band would go viral it would probably be Allura or something, he can’t help but show respect for how attentive Lance was being with the entire ordeal. Not only was he taking it dead serious, but his critical brow and sharp juncture in tone made it impossible for Keith to imagine bursting his bubble with that rudimentary piece of information. Not when Lance had already put in so much effort after just a _day._

So Keith listens wordlessly for nearly a full hour, mainly eating and drinking in between minor offers of commentary, and Lance shows him recent viral videos alongside an Excel spreadsheet he’d managed to whip up on his phone. 

By noon, Keith can’t be sure if he wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all or commend Lance for being such a dedicated makeshift manager. 

“In conclusion,” Lance sighs, as though he’s just gone through a long winded school presentation. “I’m thinking we could record a few videos of you on my page to gain traction and attention since I already have a following, and then once enough people are interested you start posting on your own account and then bada-bing, bada-bam. Overnight sensation.”

Out of all the things Lance had said thus far, it’s this that garners his attention the most. “My _own_ account? I don’t know…”

“Don’t sweat it, Mullet. It’s easy, pinky swear. All you have to do is press record, do your little thing, and post.” 

  
“I _don’t_ have a mullet,” Keith deadpans, resisting the urge to pull at his hair. “But still… I’ve never been all that great at the social media thing.” 

This, of course, was the understatement of the century. Saying Keith “wasn’t that great” at social media was like saying lava ‘wasn’t that hot’. Not only did Keith fail to have any sort of grasp on a social platform from the past decade, but the only digital footprint he carried at all (aside from the unfortunate recording of his impromptu brawl with James Griffin) was his empty FaceBook account, where his only friend was Shiro and his profile picture was an old scanned photo of his dad’s red truck. In summary, Keith was pretty much alienated from the technological world and all of its components. 

Therefore, he’s obviously grateful when Lance laughs with a shrug and says, “Don’t worry, Kogane. I’ll help you out. Just hit me up whenever you’re ready to record a video.” 

The words barely process in Keith’s head before he mirthlessly responds, “What about we make one now then?”

And, okay, in retrospect maybe he should’ve weighed his words a bit more. Maybe he should’ve taken some outside factors into consideration, but he hadn’t really taken _anything_ into consideration. He just decided right then that he was ready to make a cover if Lance was up for it, so he offered. But based on the way the teen in front of him all but blanked on words, he figured maybe that wasn’t enough of a reason. 

“Now?” Lance stutters, fingers reaching for the pen he’d been writing with earlier and then clicking at its button several times. A loud ringing fills Keith’s ears, aside from the pen’s _click-clat-click,_ and he averts his eyes while Lance’s goes wide. 

“Yeah. I mean, my house is only a few blocks from here and I don’t have anywhere to be for a while. Unless you’re busy then-”

“I’m not busy,” Lance interrupts, the clicking of the pen picking up speed. “I-um. If you’re good, I’m down.” Lance attempts to recover, his eyes darting out the window, back to Keith, and then focusing on the road outside the window again. 

“Cool.” 

“Yup, cool.” 

Keith isn’t sure what it is that’s shifted so sharply between them that’s got Lance on edge after that, but somehow he feels a lot less nervous while Lance looks as though he’s about to lose his breakfast. 

Eyes continue to dart while Lance packs his things up, and when Keith goes to throw his trash away there’s still an astute noise in Keith’s ears that’s so loud he wonders if he’s got tinnitus. 

“Bathroom,” Lance suddenly announces, thumb jutting towards the restroom at the back of the establishment, and he’s stalking off before Keith can even acknowledge him leaving. The stiffness in Lance’s words and posture is unusual, and the way Lance scurries away is downright weird, but Keith chalks it up to it being Lance being an overall odd person with a shrug before going to the front register to hand Coran his wooden coasters and empty mini platters. 

“Good evening to ya, Keith,” Coran hums in Keith’s direction after spotting him from behind the counter, his large mustache that was more of a bush than facial hair switching every which way. “Lovely weather, innit? I figure it ought to be yalmor hunting season soon, no?” 

Keith doesn’t carry the slightest idea on what a yalmor is, or why any normal person would be excited about the darkened skies and endless snow, so he only shrugs and says, “I don’t know much about that but here’s the coasters and plates from my table.” 

Coran accepts the dishes gratefully and smiles. “My bus boy could’ve gotten it, thank you number four.” 

Keith arches his eyebrow at the nickname, but doesn’t directly comment on it. Instead he waits for Lance to exit the bathroom, and when he doesn’t he turns back to the cafe manager. 

“Say, Coran,” he starts. “Can I ask you a question?” 

“Sure, kiddo. Unless it's about what’s in the nunvill milkshakes, in which case my mustache is sealed,” Coran answers, pretending to lock a key and store it in the front pocket of his apron.

“Uh, no,” Keith murmurs, making a mental note to never order whatever the hell a nunvill milkshake was. “I was just talking to Allura earlier and she said you already chose the name of the band for us. I don’t hate Sixth Lion or anything but what’s your thing with lions?” 

Keith didn’t know much about Coran, Allura’s uncle who looked nothing like her and didn’t act much like her at all, either. All he knew of the aging man was that he ran the cafe where Keith got his daily coffee, had an unrecognizable accent that made a few of his words and expressions come off as incoherent, and what _was_ coherent hardly ever made perfect sense. But based on the name of the cafe he ran and the name he decided for Allura’s band, Keith was guessing that the man had a minor obsession for large felines. But he was also guessing that maybe there was a reason as to why, at least. 

“Oh, that’s easy,” Coran chuckles, side stepping from the front register as one of his afternoon employees entered for their shift and a wistful look took over his face. “I’m sure you’ve heard of Voltech University, no? The one in uptown New York?” 

Keith nods his head gingerly, admittedly invested in Coran’s explanation. 

“Well, that’s where Allura’s dad went to college and met most of his closest friends. They were quite the tight knit group, you see, and smart, too. I was just a TA at the time, leading their study groups in business and statistics, but I couldn’t help but admire the way they always got on and helped one another out in class. Their marks were so high their professors thought that they were all helping each other cheat, but they were just so close they got the same grades in their shared courses,” Coran laughed, his face shifting from wistful to melancholy. “Anyway, there were five of them and their school mascot was a lion so that’s where the name Five Lions came from. And Allura applied to Voltech, thus making her the sixth lion.” 

“What if she doesn’t get in, though?” Keith asks, without any ill intent but simply thinking aloud, and fortunately Coran doesn’t take any offense. 

“She’s still a little lion to me,” the older man shrugs, his wrinkles and graying hair seeming to stand out gravely as he looks past Keith to think of a better time. “She’s got Alfor’s wit and strength, and I think that’s what makes a lion more than anything else.” 

“Alfor?”

“That’s her father’s name,” Coran smiles, the sentiment making Keith frown as he feels slightly unsettled. Partially because he wishes that Coran’s smile wouldn’t be so sad, as though he’s missing something that he lost before he could fully grasp it, but also because he’s realizing that this was the first genuine conversation he’d had with his local barista. Further than that, something about the entire story feels familiar. As though he’s heard it under a different light, or from another perspective. Especially upon hearing the name of Allura’s father; it stood out to him the most out of all the things Coran had said, and it wasn’t familiar in a way in which he’d heard things in passing or as an afterthought. 

Before he could question Coran further, however, Lance was entering the scene with a fresh smile on his face and a string of toilet paper on the bottom of his shoe. 

“Ready to go?” Lance asks, his chest puffed out as he grips his backpack straps tightly. Keith bites back a smile, especially when he notices the tissue stuck to the bottom of Lance’s left sneaker, and so he simply nods out of fear that his voice might hold more laughter than words. 

“See ya, Coran! Thanks for the coffee!” Lance calls on his way out of the door, catching the attention of several customers who shoot him annoyed glares, but it all goes over his head as he exits the building with a smile on his face and a piece of the bathroom at his heel.

And when Coran wishes a farewell in response over the jingle of the door’s bells, Keith realizes the ringing in his ear from earlier has been completely replaced with a much more upbeat tone that leaves him in an uncharacteristically good mood. 

\- -

  
  


Walking home with Lance, Keith came to a very short but nonetheless meaningful list of conclusions. 

For one, Lance was talkative. _Very_ talkative. You’d think that a guy could only have so much to say to somebody he barely knows on a ten minute walk, but Lance rattled on relentlessly all the same. Even when he wasn’t talking per se, he was making noise with hums and whistles. And maybe it wouldn’t have been so annoying if Lance had said something of substance, but somehow Lance decided that mundane topics such as where to get the best hot chocolate and what he did over winter break were perfect subjects to discuss. And just as irritatingly, whenever he began humming, the repetitive tune would get stuck in Keith’s head until Lance finally shut up, making it hard for Keith to at least ignore Lance’s expendable noise. 

Second of all, Lance made all this chatter and didn’t need much- or even _expect_ much- from Keith’s end. At some point Keith wondered if Lance even knew what a question was, because he’d ask something like where Keith got his boots or what he got for Christmas, and would barely even give Keith a chance to answer before he was answering his own question. The only time Lance actually _did_ give Keith the opportunity to speak up was when he finally took notice of the tissue stuck to his shoe, and was demanding that Keith stop laughing to apologize for not bringing it to his attention sooner. 

As it goes without saying, Keith was pretty drained of Lance’s insistent yapping by the time they finally made it to his front door. So while he’s typing in the entrance pin to get in, Keith rolls his eyes at whatever Lance has shifted the one-sided conversation to and offhandedly comments, “You talk a lot.”

And just like that, Lance’s mouth snaps closed as though someone has forcibly zipped his lips together and brandished them tightly closed with a lock and chain. 

At first, Keith is grateful. He’s able to focus on putting in the apartment pin, heading upstairs to his floor, and then unlocking the door. It’s quiet as he slips off his shoes and then instructs Lance to do the same, and Lance shakes his head ‘no’ rather than opens his mouth when Keith asks if Lance wants anything to drink. 

But then, after both of them have slipped their coats off and Keith has settled in his room with Lance standing shyly in the doorway, it comes to Keith like a bold and brash semi-truck of realization that Lance’s sudden shift in mood wasn’t for the better, and that his words were likely taken the wrong way.

“Um,” Keith starts, taking Lance’s coat from him and averting his gaze. “I didn’t mean you talking a lot was a bad thing, by the way, I just… it was just an observation.” By all means, it had not _just_ been an observation. Keith had been undeniably peeved at his front steps, with aggressive winds nipping at his right ear and Lance’s pointless jabber rattling through his left. But that’s not to say he meant for Lance to feel bad about it after.

“Oh.” Lance seems to take in this additional bit of information, weighs it dutifully for a second, and then shrugs. “Well, it’s not like you were wrong or anything. I _do_ talk a lot so it’s okay to remind me once in a while.”

“I don’t mind,” Keith lies. Or half lies? He doesn’t _appreciate_ Lance yipping and yapping like a chihuahua in desperate need of a muzzle, but he didn’t exactly _hate_ it either. “Your voice is nice.” 

He struggles with the compliment for several seconds, and after he’s said it he thinks maybe he should’ve thought about his words a little longer. Especially from the way Lance pauses, one of his hands halfway towards his pocket to reach for his phone but stopping upon hearing Keith.

“Thank… you?” Lance laughs, and Keith decides that if he doesn’t want to die of embarrassment within the next ten minutes, he was just going to have to cut through the tension by pretending the awkwardness simply wasn’t there. 

“Anyway, what was the song you wanted me to sing?” 

And just like that, things are fine. At least, for the most part. Lance struggles to meet Keith’s eye, but it doesn’t take Lance long for him to go back into business mode and for them to actually make progress with creating Keith’s internet identity. 

It involves a lot of arguing, and even more coaxing on Lance’s end, but eventually a few songs are decided for Keith to learn over the next few weeks to post as short covers later on. Afterwards, they go through a few songs that Keith already knows for Lance to record and to teach Keith how to edit and post, and within an hour Lance has recorded Keith singing the chorus to one of Christian Leave’s newer releases, leaving Keith admittedly tired. Enough so for him to drop his acoustic guitar on his bed and then press against his pillow beside it, swallowing back the yawn that’s creeping up on him. 

“Are you seriously tired?” Lance questions, settling at the edge of Keith’s comforter with chary rather than boisterously as Keith did. “We barely did anything.”

“I had a long night,” Keith says into his pillow, barely audible, and feels the weight shift against him as Lance seems to grow more comfortable in his space. 

“So did I. I was up for a while trying to find out which songs would fit your… original aesthetic and, trust me, it wasn’t easy.” 

This is enough for Keith to sit up, glancing at Lance to check him for any signs of cynicism or sarcasm, but he comes off as genuine and suddenly Keith remembers the music he’d heard from Lance’s Spotify well into the night. 

“You know, you don’t have to try so hard. I appreciate it, but this whole internet thing isn’t that big of a deal.” If anything, it was only “a deal” at all because Lance had made it into one. If things abided by Keith’s original intentions, then he’d simply play music for the sake of playing music, without ever needing or searching for an audience. The thought of people listening to him play didn’t upset him, but it didn’t excite him either. 

“But I have to pay you back,” Lance answers with all the seriousness he could probably muster from his thin frame, and Keith has to resist rolling his eyes. 

“You don’t need to do some grand gesture to clear your conscience.” 

“But I _want_ to,” Lance answers without missing a beat, and Keith settles against his headboard to study him. When he meets Lance’s eyes, with intent this time, he sees that Lance is already doing the same towards him. 

It’s one thing for Lance to buy Keith milkshakes and apologize out of guilt, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about Lance going out of his way to commit to a supposed favor for the sake of feeling better about himself. And he’s about to voice as much when Lance speaks up. 

“But I’m not _just_ doing it because I feel bad. I… I think you have a nice voice, too. Other people should get to hear it.” 

Keith isn’t sure how to respond to this, so he doesn’t. He eyes Lance, who by now has turned his attention elsewhere, until the silence runs icy hot and Lance eventually picks up the conversation again. 

“You know what I just realized?” he asks while beginning to pace Keith’s room, without actually giving Keith the chance to give a guess. “I don’t really know anything about you other than you’re Pidge’s friend. Like, you could be an axe murderer that lured me here to kill me for all I know.” 

Keith can’t help but laugh to himself at the way Lance rushes his words, clearly talking out of his ass to overrun his previous words.

“If I were going to kill you, it wouldn’t be here. My neighbors are way too nosy.”

“That’s reassuring,” Lance replies dryly, tugging on his ear while taking a seat at the edge of Keith’s bed. 

“Okay fine, what do you want to know?” Keith wasn’t open to telling mundane facts about himself, but he _was_ open to talking for the sake of taking a break from recording videos with Lance.

“What’s your favorite color?” 

“Red, I guess?” 

“You don’t know your own favorite color for sure?” Lance accuses with a frown, and Keith rolls his eyes. 

“Does it matter?” 

“I guess not,” Lance says after a second of them blinking stately at one another. “What about your favorite food?” 

“I like all food.” Keith shrugs, closing his eyes as the lack of sleep from the night before begins to catch up with him. Which means he’s unprepared when one of his pillows crashes against his face, and he nearly falls out of his bed in surprise. 

“Your answers are so _boring,_ ” Lance complains, hugging Keith’s pillow to his chest as if he didn’t just commit assault with it. “I’d probably have an easier time getting to know a pencil sharpener.”

Keith feels his face morph into something distasteful while trying to recollect himself, scratching at his head and trying to come up with a proper reply that won’t end with him getting smacked upside the head again.

“God, _okay_. I don’t know...oden soup I guess?” he struggles. “Or maybe rice porridge. My grandma used to make it a lot when I was little and it was really nice, honestly.” 

This seems to satisfy Lance, who takes Keith’s words in for a minute before smiling. 

“What about you?” Keith questions, simply to return the sentiment. 

“Hm…, don’t know,” Lance barely says before Keith is slapping him across the face with a fresh pillow. 

\- -

Keith can’t say how much time he spends asking Lance questions back and forth, or how many times they toss pillows across the other’s head in between. But he can say when the conversation comes to an end. 

It’s after Lance has explained why he wanted to go to the Garrison, and Keith explains why he wanted to leave even before being expelled, with Keith offering answers that are more open than even he anticipated giving, that Lance presses just a little too far.

“So did you ever take a look at that book I gave you? The one about soulmates?” Lance says from his place hanging upside down over Keith’s duvet, his face blotching red as blood runs to his face.

“What?” Keith straightens, hands gripping over his palms as he tenses. How the questioning went from favorite video games and school to soulmates he didn’t know, but maybe this was a normal line of questioning and he was just too touchy about the topic to see that.

“Remember the book from Friday?”

“Oh that… no, I didn’t look at it.” Keith knew exactly what Lance was talking about- the menacing unread pages that sat in his bedside drawer reminding him of the fib he’d told days ago. As small as it was, it still pestered him that he had to lie at all, and now that Lance was bringing it up he had a pins and needles feeling all over. 

“Really? How come?”

“I don’t care?” Keith struggles, but doesn’t regret it once the admission is finally free and in the air. He’d be lying for a second time to Lance if he said anything else.

“What do you mean you _don’t_ care?” Lance slips off of Keith’s bed suddenly and without grace, the half of him that was hanging off the ledge of the bed now lopsided against the floor. Although Lance doesn’t seem to mind or notice, because he’s too busy sending shocked and borderline accusing stares in Keith’s direction.

“I don’t see the point in obsessing over something like that when most people don’t even have soulmates,” Keith said plainly, scratching at the back of his ear.. 

“It’s not _obsessing,_ it’s being prepared. Besides, the whole not-having-a- soulmate thing is a common misconception. A study conducted at MIT shows that three out of seven people never meet their soulmate, not three of seven don’t _have_ a soulmate like a lot of people think.”

“Well, a study conducted in my room shows that one of two people _still_ don’t care,” Keith huffs, irritated and ready to get away from a conversation he never wanted to have in the first place. “Now I’m gonna go get a snack. Want anything?” 

“Hot chips if you have them...please,” Lance grumbled, folding his arms from his place on the floor despite the soft undertones in his voice. 

The loud noise Keith heard in his ears softened a bit, and it gave him a chance to think as he made his way to the kitchen. He’d assumed at the library that Lance had been one of those soulmate-crazed freaks, and now the confirmation was anything but nice. It had him wondering if he even wanted to be friends with Lance at that point; it was hard to believe he’d be easy to be around if he was going to be rattling off at the mouth about the one thing Keith hated hearing about. But on the other hand, Keith wondered if maybe he was being too intolerant about the entire ordeal. Maybe Lance enjoyed the thought of soulmates for the exact same reasons Keith disliked them, and it’s not like he could ignore that there was some validity in finding comfort in the idea of them. Not when Shiro and Adam were living proof that there was a brighter side to it all. 

It was a lot to think about while looking for fruit snacks and hot Cheetos, and the break from his own thinking was more than welcomed. 

After he’s successfully found shark-shaped gummies but can’t figure out where Adam has hidden his family-sized bag of hot chips recently, Keith hears a jingle in the door and curiously turns the corner of the room in time to see his brother entering the apartment.

“Shiro?” he questions, causing his sibling to all but jump out of his boots in shock. 

“Jeez, give me a heart attack why don’t you. What are you doing here?” 

“Band stuff…,” Keith answers thoughtfully, then looks his older brother up and down. “What about you?” 

“Accidentally left my lunch in the fridge,” he answers easily, and Keith follows Shiro back to the kitchen. 

For a second Keith forgets they’re not alone, with him opening one of the packets of fruit gummies he left on the counter and engaging in mild conversation about how his brother’s classes of the day have been so far. But he’s abruptly reminded when Lance enters the scene, thick socks dragging against the apartment flooring and one of his hoodie strings between his teeth as he chews nervously. 

“Actually, Keith, Cheetos probably won’t go well with that hot chocolate I had earlier so maybe I’ll pass on the chips. Unless you have-” Lance stops mid sentence, as his gaze travels from the floor, to Keith, and then finally lands on Shiro who’s currently leaning against the kitchen counter. And then, the loose hoodie string is falling from between his teeth as his mouth goes gaping. 

“Band stuff?” Shiro laughs in Keith’s direction, his head leaning lightly in Lance’s direction and Keith is hardly able to respond before Lance is rushing through the atmosphere with a flurry of words. 

“You’re- oh my God- you’re Takashi Shirogane, holy shit.” As Lance grows continually excited, his face going from disbelief to awe to unfiltered jubilee, Keith grows more and more confused. And Shiro’s perplexity is there to match, his forehead wrinkling and the scar across the bridge of his nose scrunching upwards. 

“Kira, why does your band stuff know me?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Lance corrects, fixing his posture and finally gaining a grip. “It’s just, I remember seeing you in the Chicago Tribune years ago and- I don’t know- your case has stuck with me since. It was so amazing, and I saw you in the new issue of the _Chicken Noodle Soup_ series too! You’re basically the reason I want to study biological essence now and um- wow.” 

Keith is speechless at the entire exchange, and he still doesn’t have the words to fill in the blanks of what the hell is going on even when Shiro manages to connect the dots. 

“Oh. _Oh_ , that! Um, well I’m glad you found me inspiring? Nice to meet you,” Shiro struggles, offering an introductory hand, and Lance accepts it gladly. 

“I’m Lance, by the way. Uh, sorry to intrude, I was just helping Keith with, um,… music.” 

There’s a pause in the room, short but silent enough for a pin to drop. 

And then, just like that, it’s gone and Shiro is quirking an eyebrow in Keith’s direction. “Interesting… Well, unfortunately I was just stopping by to pick something up but it was nice meeting you, Lance. Kira, walk me to the door, will you?” 

Keith feels as though he’s been called to the principal’s office, slugging to the front door after his brother. Not only was he completely confused regarding the interaction that had just happened, but he was even more so unsure of what he was supposed to say to answer Shiro’s inevitable questioning. Luckily for him, Shiro really _does_ have to go, and instead of grilling him for answers immediately he whispers at the door, “You should invite him over for dinner some time. He seems nice.” 

Keith knows his brother is mostly teasing, considering Keith is hardly home for dinner himself due to his class schedule, so he rolls his eyes to the moon and back before slamming the door shut after his brother and locking it shut. 

He’s still thinking of what to say later on, whenever Shiro inevitably brings up the awkward moment whenever the opportunity arises, when he’s forced to meet Lance back at the kitchen. 

“Okay, give it to me hard,” Lance starts, chewing in intervals as he snacks on the fruit gummies he’s apparently found. “Did I just make a complete fool of myself?”

“Kind of? I wouldn’t worry about it, though. He probably won’t remember the details of meeting you by tomorrow, he’s kind of forgetful,” Keith answers with a shrug. “Though I’m not sure why you freaked out in the first place.” 

“I was star-struck, Keith. That was like meeting a D-list celebrity at least- like Dominic Fike or one of the ex members of Maroon 5. I knew he lived in Chicago but I never would’ve guessed I’d actually meet him, especially _here_ of all places. How do you know him again?” Lance says, eyes shining like two pieces of moonlight were stuck in his irises and directly reflecting the sun’s rays. It was certainly a sight for sore eyes, one that had Keith rolling his pupils to the back of his head before exiting the kitchen without a second thought. 

“He’s my brother,” he explains, Lance tailing his heels loudly. 

“Lucky… You must’ve been so excited when he met his soulmate, huh?”

“I guess?” Keith sighs, trying not to wince at the memory. Keith _had_ been excited for Shiro when he met his soulmate, don’t get him wrong. But that entire year, and even the year before had been an awkward time. Shiro meeting Adam in the midst of the already ongoing chaos just seemed to add another layer of complications to the things that Keith’s family were already struggling with. “But I don’t get why _you_ care so much.” 

Lance stared at Keith with unfiltered concentration, as though Keith was the puzzle that needed to be solved and not the other way around. 

“Because it was cool? I mean, how often does something like that happen? Most people don’t even have soulmarks so it was obviously a big deal when your brother _lost_ his, but-” Lance cuts himself off upon realizing that Keith has stopped listening in favor of picking up his guitar to strum at it idly while waiting for Lance to tucker himself out with the topic, and Keith is glad when he finally stops talking. 

He hopes that’s as far as Lance will take things, now that Keith has made it clear that he doesn’t exactly care. 

As hard as Keith tried to be tolerant of people going on about things he couldn’t care less about, such as when Pidge and Matt managed to rope him into a conversation about how they managed to hack extra power-ups for themself on their WiiU games or when Nyma ranted about how she wasn’t sure if she wanted her next hairstyle to be butterfly locs or box braids, he had to draw the line somewhere. And at that point in his life it was at soulmates. Especially when it was in regards to how his older brother managed to find his soulmate, despite Shiro losing his right arm in the military and the soulmark that once rested on his right wrist by extension. If Keith had a dollar for everytime a stranger randomly recognized Shiro from the online articles that circulated every other media platform the months following Adam and Shiro meeting, he’d… well, he’d only probably have enough to buy lunch and maybe dinner for a day. But still, _one_ person telling him how amazing his brother’s story was was annoying enough considering that didn’t really have anything to do with Keith. But more than one person telling Keith took the cake, especially when it was brought up years after the event occurred. 

“Okay, I know you already said you don’t care about soulmates. But c’mon, how many people get _two_ soulsigns?” Lance says, sounding farther away than when Keith last paid him any mind. “ I would’ve guessed you’d, I don’t know, have some sort of hype for it since you kind of experienced the whole thing first hand, right?” 

Oh, Keith experienced everything first hand, alright. At times it felt like he was still living through it all over again. Everytime he caught Shiro up at night, unable to sleep because of the things he’d seen and the pain he felt that would eventually lead to him losing a limb, Keith was quickly transported to six years ago when his older brother was just a soldier that had been shipped home with a broken spirit and a misplaced soulmark. On the days when Shiro couldn’t get out of bed because of things he struggled to talk to anyone but his therapist about, Keith was very aggressively reminded of the contrast that he’d seen in his brother when he left Keith with his grandmother in Japan and then returned with an inability to smile as brightly as he used to. Sure, some lost pieces of Shiro came back to him over time after he was able to properly jump through the legal hoops of adopting Keith and started going steady with Adam, but those were the brighter details of a darker story. It was hard to look at what the media saw, as Shiro being the soldier who gained a soulmate just when he thought all hope was lost, when the narrative was so clearly lacking the details of the hardship Shiro went through when Keith was right there through all of it. But that’s not to say he didn’t try to look at things without bias or reserve. 

Glancing up from his guitar, giving his fingers a rest against the metal strings and taking a peek at Lance who had taken a seat at Keith’s desk, he noticed the younger teen was hunched over reading something that caught Keith’s eye. 

“What’s that?” 

“It’s the latest issue of the Chicken Noodle Soup series- _Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soulmate Searcher’s Soul_. Did you know your brother is one of the stories in here? I found it last week at the library.” 

As if on cue, Lance flipped a page and when Keith made his way to the desk and took a look at what Lance was focused on, there was a picture of Adam and Shiro next to long paragraphs regarding their story. 

With their story, of course, being something that Keith had a love hate relationship with. As had been reported in the Chicago Tribune years ago, before Keith had even legally been adopted and while Shiro was still getting used to his prosthetic arm, Shiro had lost his soulmark and seemingly all chances of ever meeting his soulmate. With the Japanese tradition of keeping soulmarks private under all conditions, there was no use trying to replicate the mark that once resided on Shiro’s wrist under a thick black band. So his brother went without a soulsign, and would seemingly continue to do so for the rest of his life. That is, until Shiro met his physical therapist, Adam Foster, and upon physical touch their hair shifted to opposing colors, leaving them both speechless and a little more than disoriented. It wasn’t long for them to connect the dots of what had just happened, after the situation had been assessed and they realized Shiro’s once black undercut had turned a bright white while Adam’s blond locks were now a deep brunet. The story carried some hilarity, making it an easy conversation starter when colleagues and associates questioned either of them on how they’d met or why their hair colors had become altered. Needless to say, news travels and before either of them knew it they were becoming a hot topic as their budding romance formed. Within three months, Shiro and Adam had their faces on local news and a hold on each other’s hearts. 

As one can imagine, most people found their story charming, if not Hallmark-like. But Keith wasn’t most people. He remembered the uneasy road of Shiro having to explain who he was to Adam and how he’d ended up in physical therapy with a missing limb in the first place. Keith could recall the stress Shiro showed from being obligated to get to know his soulmate those first few weeks, despite his brother never wanting to admit those underlying feelings. Keith knew, no matter what Shiro refused to verbalize, that it had been hard putting food on the table for a twelve year old using veteran benefits, sporting an aching body fresh with wounds from a war that tore more from him than he could ever get back, trying to peacefully mourn a dead older brother, and then trying to get to know your soulmate on top of it all. There had been so many expectations Shiro had been forced to meet during that year alone, Keith wished that somehow the load could’ve been lightened just slightly. He wished that maybe Adam and Shiro could’ve met and supported each other naturally, rather than being thrusted into something new by fate or whatever was on the other end of soul lines. And maybe he shouldn’t worry about what had occurred years ago- everything had worked out in the end, and soulmates _were_ quite literally made for each other. 

But it was hard to rest easy when the hardship left such a bittersweet taste in Keith’s mouth. It was hard to forget that, seven years ago, there had been a whole lot more pain than blessings. Especially not when the memory was being awoken and uprooted by people like Lance, pointing out how Adam and Shiro’s story was a picture in a perfect frame, but a total Monet nonetheless- nice from a distance but a lot more complicated upon further inspection. 

The contrast of virtue versus reality was annoying to say the least, and he definitely didn’t think Adam and Shiro were _Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soul_ kinds of people. He’d nearly forgotten that the two people he saw everyday would be included in the cheesy series, but Shiro had been more than happy to be a trophy on display as the heartwarming tale he represented. Adam had shown apprehension, Keith slowly recollected, at long photo shoots and interviews regarding the tale they were forced to relive regularly that year. But based on the picture in the book, you’d never guess that there’d been any tension in Adam’s mind about the entire ordeal. In fact, based on the picture beside their story with Shiro cradling Adam by the waist and both of them smiling ear to ear, foreheads pressed together gently with only a few hairs of space between them, it’d be hard to guess that either of them were capable of expressing anything other than joy. The picture looked like something straight out of a fairytale, as if his brother was Cinderella who’d lost her slipper rather than an injured veteran who’d lost his soulmark. It almost made Keith regret all of the things he’d said to Lance; if _this_ was the basis he had to go off of what Shiro represented, without any additional context, then he supposes he would have a more positive perspective on soulmates, too. But he saw Shiro in way too many lights, under way too many scenarios of anguish or discomfiture or plight, for him to see Shiro as the soulmate miracle that people like Lance saw. 

“I wish something like that would happen to me…,” Lance whispered into his hand, while both of them were still scanning the page with interest, and Keith couldn’t help furrowing his eyebrows. 

“You wish you lost your arm?” 

“What? No! I just meant- I mean I think it’d be nice to have someone you know will love you unconditionally. My friend Hunk- you met him already, right?- he’s already met his soulmate but they’re the type that want to live their own lives before actually committing to anything. But I don’t get that, ya know? If I met my soulmate I wouldn’t wanna leave their side.” 

Keith feels his face flush darkly, as if Lance’s words have anything to do directly with him and Lance isn’t just objectively speaking about someone who he may or may not meet. 

“Don’t you think you could have a perfectly good relationship with someone without them being your soulmate? That’s why the whole soulmate thing never made sense to me. People act like the universe is the only one who can decide who you end up with but soulmates shouldn’t be everything,” Keith argues, picking at one of his ears as the chiming continues. Then, he thinks better of his words and deflates slightly. “Even if soulmates do seem ideal…” 

At the core of it, Keith can’t say what is about soulmates that irks his nerves to such a strong degree. Maybe it’s the fact that soulmates, something he grew up being taught was personal and private, are capitalized off of for the sake of writing news articles or books that’ll wrench the hearts of romantics but never shown realistically. 

“But it’s not the universe, it’s genetic,” Lance counters. 

“What?” 

As if on cue, Lance takes out a new book from his backpack from where it sits against Keith’s desk, and Keith recognizes it as the book Lance offered him a week ago at the library. Although this version is well loved, worn at the binding and corners, frayed by certain pages, and its cover is purple and in Spanish whereas its counterpart was blue and in English. 

“Didn’t you pay attention during the essence units in biology? Soulmates aren’t based on randomized chance from some higher being- at least, not completely. Soul signs are usually genetic. See, look-” Lance points to a page he’s flipped to rather quickly, where the page corner is folded as if he was reading it recently. “Hunk’s soulmate, Shay, has a soul sign that’s based on sound. She’s Balmeran and a lot of people from there usually hear a loud ringing in their ears when they meet their soulmates. They also wear these large rings in their ears that are passed down from generation to generation, made out of the native Balmeran crystal, that glows when the ringing bounces from their ears and onto the earrings. And when it glows that’s how they know they’ve met their soulmates. Cool, right?” 

Keith nods, admittedly invested in the spontaneous biology lesson though he wasn’t willing to reveal this aloud. He had been so adamantly against most people’s obsession with soulmates for so many years, so he wasn’t about to just throw all of his beliefs out the window. Even if what Lance was showing him was pretty cool… 

“And soulsigns are passed down in lots of other cultures as well. There’s obviously the red string of fate that’s traditional in China, where people are born with red rings around one of their fingers and it starts to sort of pull them towards their soulmate once they’re nearby,” Lance explains rapidly, flipping through pages and pointing to pictures accordingly. “And then amazingly there’s people from Hiroshima, Japan who can only see in gray scales until they meet their soulmate. But the thing is scientists actually believe that this may be a genetic mutation that developed within the native population after World War II because-”

For the first time since opening his book, Lance looks up, and when he meets eyes with Keith he frowns and scratches at the back of his neck. “I’m talking too much again, aren’t I?”

Keith considers telling him that he was rambling because, well, he _was_. But in truth, he didn’t want Lance to stop. For the first time in forever, he actually cared about what somebody had to say regarding the one thing that had endlessly irritated him for years. 

“No,” Keith responds, shaking his head slightly. “I’m… actually learning something.” 

At this Lance smiles brightly, and goes to read from a new page. “Your brother’s ancestry from the Nagano prefecture in Japan, right?”

“Yeah…his parents. How’d you know that?” Keith answers, leaning against his desk and folding his arms. 

“I guessed since he has a soulsign that was a mark on his arm- they’re traditional to that region in Japan. That’s why in so many Japanese shows people find their soulmates through soulmarks, even though soulmarks are fairly rare these days. And when he met Adam his hair turned white and Adam’s darkened, right? That’s a genetic mutation that people call the yin-yang soulsign from China. I’m sure if you guys looked on, like, 23 & Me either him or Adam would probably have some history from China or something.”

At this Keith is fully invested in the words Lance is spewing, but it’s then that Lance decides to close his book and lean back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head in the process. 

“Anyway,” Lance yawns. “Even aside from the whole romantic side of it all, that’s why I like soulmates. It’s kind of, I don’t know, interesting to me, the way it’s personable but isn’t at the same time.” 

Keith takes a moment to process this, before scratching at the back of his ear, where the chiming he'd heard has transitioned into a quiet hum. “Sobo always told me that our soulmates were people who our ancestors had filled with love that would be gifted to us, and our soulsigns were our guides to them. That’s why we never showed our soulmarks, out of respect for our ancestors or whatever.”

He doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but he can’t help but stare at his right arm where his soulmark would be if he had one. Like his father, like his grandparents, like Shiro. He can’t help but stare at the empty space that reminded him that his ancestors seemingly forgot that he needed love, too.

He doesn’t take heed of the way he’s staring accusing daggers at his own skin until Lance is speaking up again.

“That makes sense. I mean, science can explain why we have which soulsign but not why we end up with who’s on the other end,” Lance says, voice matching Keith’s melancholy mood, then he additionally whispers. “But, if you’re worried about not having a soulmark… um, you might have a different soulsign than your family due to colonization and stuff. Some people have traditional soul traces but a lot of people have more personal ones. Like, I have a different soulsign than anyone I know, _especially_ compared to my family.” 

“Really? What’s yours?” 

An abrasive frown overtakes Lance’s face, and for a second Keith wonders if maybe he’s overstepped a line or two. But just as quick as it came, it’s gone and Lance is shaking his head with a cheeky grin.

“That’s _private._ Gotta respect the ancestors, right?” 

“Right…,” Keith replies dryly, and before he knows it he’s back to staring at his blank slate of a wrist. 

Because no matter what Lance tries to offer as reassurance, he already knows the truth. The deep down verity behind why he’s always despised soulmates; he doesn’t have a soulsign, and he doesn’t have a soulmate. 

\- -

The weeks following Lance offering his simple teachings regarding soulmates, things change dramatically, and yet not at all. 

Keith’s days are still mostly empty, with his schedule mainly being band practice and night classes. He still falls asleep late writing song lyrics or doing homework while listening to music, and his only real source of fuel that keeps him awake after those all-nighters are coffees from Coran’s cafe. But there’s new elements that he has to adjust to as well. With Lance in the picture, things aren’t so… lonely. And that’s not to say he was exactly lonesome before; he had Pidge, Nyma, Allura, and his family obviously. But now he had Lance butting in at any given chance, for any given reason, and Keith was rarely without a companion on most days. 

During the weekdays Lance would take an off campus lunch with Hunk and blow up Keith’s phone with demanding texts until he met them at their local Nando’s or Chipotle, and Lance would hightail to the band’s practice room after his swim practice to be able to ride the bus home with Keith, and even on the weekends he was inserting Keith in plans with only a last minute heads up. Usually this included riding with Hunk and Lance in Hunk’s van to make cake deliveries or croissant and bagel drop-offs for Hunk’s parent’s bakery. Or sometimes it was afternoons at the Holt residence, helping Pidge with her latest project or attempting to beat the Holt siblings in a Nintendo Smash tournament. Either way, it was a big adjustment. Somehow Lance had gone from Pidge’s friend to being Keith’s personal nuisance/walking soulmate textbook/band manager. Obviously, it was a lot to take in over just the course of one month.

It wasn’t exactly easy to _explain_ , either. 

“Is it me, or are you really busy lately?” Adam asks one morning, slipping on his shoes while leaning against the wall but still eyeing his brother-in-law from around the corner. 

“It’s you. I’m never busy,” Keith replies, half-sarcastic but mostly playful, and Adam rolls his eyes accordingly while Shiro enters the room with his blankets and covers still wrapped around his shoulders. 

“No, you’ve definitely been preoccupied for some reason lately.” There was a pause, and then a sly grin slipping across Shiro’s face. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your _band stuff_ , would it?”

“Band stuff?” Adam questions curiously, now folding his scarf over his neck. 

“Ignore him, it’s probably just his flu talking,” Keith dismisses quickly, shooting his sickly brother glare. 

Adam stares at the two with unanswered curiosity, clearly confused but never actually questioning their strange behavior, and soon it was just the two of them left alone in the kitchen. 

“First of all, I’m sick, not senile,” Shiro coughed once Adam was gone, helping himself to the pot of soup Adam had left him on the stove. “But based on your answer, I’m guessing you being busy all of a sudden _is_ about that kid. What was his name, Logan? Larry?” 

“Lance,” Keith laughs, not being able to take his brother seriously when he was wrapped in three layers of blankets while sporting bunny slippers.

“Right, him. What have you two been up to? You aren’t back to tagging, are you?”

“No,” Keith answers quickly, cringing at the memory of his freshman self taking his frustrations on something a little more physical and visible than music. “That was just a phase. Lance and I are just… working on making the band a YouTube channel.” 

This part was at least partially true. On the days when Lance bombarded band practices, listening to one of their final songs or even skipping swim practice entirely to listen to them play for full hours, he often discussed details of them filming a new YouTube video soon. _Very_ soon. The concept for a music video was still up for grabs, but at the moment Keith was still going back and forth with Allura over text and calls about which song they should focus on. Although, that day, Keith knew exactly which song he wanted to work on.

“And you’re okay with being online? I mean, after everything that happened junior year…?” 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Keith feigns nonchalance the best he can, but he knows Shiro has a point. If you asked him how he felt about actually being on the internet a month ago, mullet and chipped acoustic guitar and all, then he’d probably give a petulant stare and turn the offer down without hesitation. But Lance was surprisingly convincing, pushing at Keith’s buttons and ridges just right and convincing him of things Keith had no interest in with precariously picked words and gestures. It was a talent that likely stemmed from Lance’s easy charm and neutrally smiling face, or maybe it was just that Keith was finally warming up to the tall stranger who was slowly becoming less and less strange. Either way, Lance got Keith to a place that was a little far from home base and completely out of the park from his comfort zone, but Keith wasn’t complaining. 

He didn’t mind people hearing him play or listening to him sing, especially not when the feedback was kind. Oh yeah, that was the other thing- Keith apparently had fans. At least, according to the likes and comments from the videos Lance had posted on his TikTok account. 

Every other day, Keith would wake up to a voice note of Lance screaming on iMessage, followed by a screenshot of one of the videos Lance posted with thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. On calmer days it was screenshots of one of the nicer comments, with people praising Keith’s ability to pull off a mullet in the twenty-first century or a particularly complicated rift, or something of the sort. Either way, Keith had a positive internet presence without even having an account, and the support and feedback didn’t hurt Keith in terms of motivating him to spend even more time on his music. 

Including that day, with Shiro slurping on his soup at the kitchen table and Keith already having a plan for once as to what he was going to do that day. 

“Since you’re staying home today, can I take your car?” Keith questioned while Shiro slurped on his soup, louder than necessary in a poorly veiled attempt to annoy his younger sibling. 

“You mean you’re going to leave me, your old and sickly _only_ brother, to take care of myself while you’re out all day? ” 

“You’re not that old,” Keith states wryly, watching as his brother pretended to be shot in the heart. 

“The white hair says otherwise, Kira. I’m practically ancient.” Keith rolls his eyes at the old joke Shiro had been using since his brother’s hair and lightened significantly upon meeting Adam years ago, and it was enough to make Shiro laugh before saying, “Okay, fine. But stop by Chinatown to get me that tea I like, will you? This sore throat is killing me.” 

And just like that, before his brother could change his mind or tell another one of his lame dad jokes, Keith was grabbing his guitar and amenities and heading out of the door with a keychain that didn’t belong to him. 

By all means, Keith Kogane knew how to drive. But, by those same means, he wasn’t very _good_ at it. Normally this didn’t matter, considering his usual mode of travel was by public transit or just the very soles of his shoes slapping against the pavement. But a part of him could feel that today was different. Maybe it was the fact that he had a pretty song he couldn’t recognize meekly playing in his head on loop, or the fact that his friends texted him earlier reporting to have all caught the flu going around which freed his schedule from band practice. Or maybe it was the angelic snow shimmering against his windshield and sparkling with the morning’s sunbeams. Whatever it may be, it gave him an unusual stream of confidence as he bobbed and weaved through traffic all the way downtown and to his favorite place to practice.

There was Washington Park near his house, that offered comfortable benches and a pleasant audience of geese and joggers. There were parking lots behind strips and shops, or the subway stations. But none of those spots compared to Lake Michigan when it came to the place that offered comfort for Keith’s practice sessions, with cold waves crashing and slapping against the shore loudly before riding up and back again. The water offered a natural metronome, and the seagulls that were searching for food to steal year around were a squawking choir that never failed to erupt with noise that Keith ironically found calming. 

So that evening, in spite of himself and in spite of the unforgiving cold, he took refuge at one of the beach’s benches and listened to the whipping winds and roaring waters for inspiration. To his surprise, lyrics came easier than usual, and he ignored the silent singing in his head in favor of working on the song that Allura had shown him the week before. 

\- -

Regardless of winter easily being Keith’s favorite season, there _was_ one thing he hated about the colder seasons- the sun’s eagerness to hide and slip behind clouds, all before slinking behind the horizon completely. Keith would’ve liked to stay outside all day, despite the frost riding against his fingers and the tingling he felt under his nose, but when the sun began to be overtaken by dark clouds he knew it was getting later in the day. The frosty chill of the aging day whipped up a new stream of cold, so he decides it’s about time he heads home, and before he knows it he’s taking the long way home by hopping on and off the expressway to avoid midday traffic.

He feels uncharacteristically light, with a loud and upbeat song playing at the back of his mind and he’s satisfied with the day he’s been having thus far. 

It’s around this time, when he’s made it part of the way home, the clock on Shiro’s car just barely reading four in the evening and the talk show host on the radio reciting some recent good news for Chicago locals, that Keith comes to a stop at a red light and he recognizes a familiar face along the sidewalk. Along the street’s corner, standing at one of the bus stops with his head ducked into his phone and headphones plugged into his ears, there’s Lance in his usual oversized coat trying to stifle off the outside cold. From his place just a few meters off, Keith can see his friend seemingly humming along to whatever music is playing through his headphones, Chuck Taylors tapping the concrete of the curb to keep in time, and he almost smiles as he imagines that maybe Lance is listening to the song Keith hears running softly against his rear membranes.

It doesn’t take him long for him to switch lanes and stop in front of Lance, honking the horn to Shiro’s car in an attempt to acquire Lance’s attention, and Keith has to bite back a laugh upon seeing the way Lance shoots his head up in alarm, nearly dropping his phone. “Need a ride?” 

It takes a couple seconds for him to register what’s going on, and then process the offer he’s received, but inevitably he enters the car and takes a seat gingerly. 

“Hey,” Keith greets easily, while Lance looks… actually, Keith isn’t sure what to make of Lance’s wide eyes and flat-lined lips. 

“Hi,” Lance eventually responds, removing his headphones and shoving his phone in his coat pocket. “Uh, thanks for the ride.”

“No problem, heading home?” 

Keith doesn’t know why he feels as though he’s picked up Lance a million times while Lance looks like he’s just been kidnapped, but he doesn’t get a sense of dread or worry as Lance provides directions to his house. He doesn’t get an uncomfortable feeling piling on his shoulders at how uncharacteristically quiet and stiff Lance is, nor does he think to question any of the details of the current scenario. He’s calm and collected, and thinking nothing about the ins and outs of everything are out of place. That is, until he actually reaches Lance’s house- a squat home with red shingles and a porch still littered with Christmas decorations- that he gets any ideas of dismay. 

It’s just as Lance is exiting the car, a “thank you” rolling off his tongue as he gathers his belongings, that Keith’s stomach decides to rumble. _Loudly._ Keith thinks of just laughing it off and speeding home to make a sandwich, but then Lance says, “Uh, did you wanna come in? I’m sure my mom has dinner ready by now.” 

It’s the first thing of any actual substance Lance has said since he entered the vehicle, and of course it’d be the thing that sets Keith on edge. He’s halfway ready to decline the offer because, well, actually going into Lance’s house was a whole lot more than he thought he could handle on a Thursday afternoon. But then again, he _was_ hungry, and a home cooked meal sounded like exactly what he needed. So before he could backtrack on his answer, he accepted and was following Lance into his home. 

“Mama! I’m home! Um, plus compaña!” Lance shouts after jiggling his keys through the door and entering, taking his shoes off at the door and gesturing for Keith to do the same. 

“Make yourself at home, don’t mind the mess,” Lance says, avoiding eye contact, as a new face turns the corner and enters the room.

“Com-? Oh, hello,” a short woman with thick, dark curls framing her round brown face greets, a thin line of worry rippling her brow. “Lance, who’s this?”

“I’m Keith, um, Lance’s friend,” Keith manages, forcing a hand in her direction and she pins a stubborn curl from her face before taking Keith’s hand and turning it into a half hug. It’s strange for one, on top of unexpected, but the savory sweet scent she emanates reminds Keith of why he’s there and he smiles.

“Ah, so you’re Keith, nice to finally meet you,” she says patting Keith on the shoulder. “I’m Andrea, Lance’s cooler mom.” 

“Is it okay if he stays for lunch?” Lance asks his mother before Keith gets the chance to think over the fact that Lance apparently talks about him at home, although his eyes aren’t really focusing on anything at all, and he wonders if it’s the cold or awkwardness of the situation that’s got Lance turning beet red. 

“Oh, of course! More publicity for my famous gumbo!” Andrea exclaims, already heading into the kitchen, and Keith turns to Lance curiously after being guided to the dining room table.

“Your mom seems nice,” Keith observes, and Lance rolls his eyes.

  
“She is, but I’m convinced it’s a facade to get you to trust her and spill all your beeswax. I can’t tell you how many times she’s blown all my business to the entire family on Facebook,” Lance laughs with a shake of his head, just as they hear the front door open followed by another person entering the room.

“Mama! Raquel told me my head is shaped like a football when we were in the car and-” Keith and Lance turn abruptly to be faced with a small girl standing in the doorway, draped in a thick coat that reaches her knees and wearing a _Sofia the First_ backpack that’s twice her size. She stops halfway in the room, comes to make eye contact with Keith, and immediately frowns. “Mama, stranger danger!” 

“Marti, shush, this is my friend,” Lance swiftly interrupts just as two more girls who look astonishingly like Lance enter the scene. 

“You have friends?” the shorter of the two girls asks from the entryway, and Keith would likely laugh if he wasn’t slightly befuddled at how much Lance’s relatives looked like him. They didn’t all share the exact same features, but the shorter of the two older girls held Lance’s exact same hair, eye, and skin color while the taller of the two had the same slope of her nose and jut of her chin.

“Uh, I’m Keith,” Keith introduces in an attempt to dispel the blundering atmosphere, but his words only seem to add to the madness.

The two girls in the entryway share a nearly identical look before grins are slipping across their faces.

“Hi, I’m Veronica, Lance’s older sister,” the tallest girl says, taking a seat across the table in front of Keith and pinning back a stray lock of hair from her dark bob cut.

“And I’m Raquel, the only normal person in this family,” Raquel sighs, making pointed eye contact with Lance over Keith’s head, and he wonders if maybe there’s something he’s missing. 

He picks up the idea that maybe there’s a lot of key information he’s left out of, even after introductions have been made and Keith is eating table with Lance and his family. Over bowls of shrimp gumbo and hot water cornbread, they all talk about their days and Keith learns a large load of information that makes him feel as though he’s doing a speed run through family-related flashcards that’ll be on some kind of Lance centric test later on. Not that he was exactly complaining, though. Keith learns that Veronica was apparently the second oldest of Lance siblings, being a sophomore at UChicago, while Raquel was Lance’s twin and Martina was Lance’s youngest sister. 

He sits through extensive tangents and inside jokes, and he actually feels glad to be in such an inviting atmosphere full of friendly faces that unsettlingly resemble Lance. Even if, through the major portions of dinner, he gets the idea that everyone knows more about him than they probably should, with Raquel bringing up Keith’s band without him mentioning it and Lance’s mother asking him about his time at Olkarion University.

Each time this happens, Lance finds a way to reroute the conversation, but it doesn’t go completely unnoticed on Keith’s end that Lance apparently talks about him. A lot. But again- he wasn’t necessarily complaining. 

By the end of the hour, Veronica and Raquel have each left the dining room in an attempt to tend to their homework and Lance’s mom has found her way to the living room to supposedly catch up on the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy. This left Lance, Marti, and Keith alone, but things didn’t exactly get much calmer from there.

Keith had originally only come to Lance’s house with the expectation of grabbing a bite before class, but somehow he ends up on his second serving of the best (and only) shrimp gumbo he’s ever had, listening to Martina tell of her day at school over her half-eaten bowl while Lance works on his homework across the table. 

“And then I told Margaret Truman that if she wanted to play with my Barbies she shouldn’t have stolen my apple sauce at lunch, and guess what she did?” 

“What?” Keith questions, fully invested in the mystery of the stolen applesauce that Martina was recounting. 

“She told a story and said it was actually Elliot Soo, even though Elliot sits all the way at the peanut allergy table!” Martina stood off her chair and smacked her hand against the table at this upsetting reveal, sending bits of her soup flying off of her abandoned spoon that landed dangerously close to Lance’s homework, causing her brother to look up. 

“Marti, could you sit back before you mess up my book?”

“I don’t know why you even bother,” Martina grumbled in response. “You can’t even read.”

Keith and Lance looked to each other, with equal amounts of shock and disbelief at her words, but it was Keith who spoke up first. 

“Martina, that’s not nice.”

“But it’s true! He can’t read good ‘cause he’s got Ahaha Sunny-D!” 

“It’s called ADHD,” Lance corrects, shooting daggers at his younger sibling. “And stop telling people my business before I tell moms to send you back to the adoption center.” 

At this Martina gasps, clearly offended as if she wasn’t just calling her brother illiterate, and goes flying out of the room hollering, “Mama, Leo is threatening me again!”

Lance huffs in response, picking up the empty dishes Martina left on the dining room table with clear annoyance on his face. But it’s the embarrassment that’s under that that’s got Keith following Lance into the kitchen with his own bowl, unsure of how to say what he’s thinking but certain it’s worth saying, even if he can’t find the perfect words. 

“Um, there’s nothing wrong with having ADHD by the way,” Keith tries, trying not to notice the way Lance pauses in setting bowls and spoons in the sink. “In case that wasn’t...obvious.” 

“I know,” Lance smiles from over his shoulder. “I’m still gonna kill her, though.” 

“Kill who?” Andrea says from the doorway to the kitchen, making her way over to her son with an indignant Martina at her heels.

“No one, Mama,” Lance says while plastering a fake smile across his face, but immediately sticks his tongue out at his little sister once Cora’s head is turned. 

“Do you have any siblings, Keith?” Andrea questions as Lance begins to scrub at one of the bowls in the sink, and bites at his lip before answering as if she was expecting a specific answer. 

“Not really. I mean I kind of have an older brother, but he’s technically my cousin,” Keith struggles, wondering why for the first time in his life he can’t just be straightforward.

“Ah, I bet it must be nice at your house since it’s just you and your parents then,” Andreahums before helping Lance dry off one of the dishes in the sink. 

“Sort of. I live with my cousin so… I guess it’s nice.” Keith toys with the cuff of his sweater while leaning against the kitchen counter, eyes focusing on the old tile on the floor and trying to wonder how he ended up talking about his family. And with Lance’s _mom_ of all people.

“Really? Why not your parents?” 

Keith thinks he hears Lance fumble with one of the dishes he’s washing, but he can’t be sure, so he just shrugs again. “Uh, well, I was never really all that close with my mom and my dad is…” _deceased, kaput, out of commission, dead, six feet under._ “really busy since he works the, uh, graveyard shift so I guess it’s just more convenient for me to live with somebody else.”

“Well-”

“Ma,” Lance interrupts before his mother can continue her impromptu game of 21 Questions. “I’m sure Keith probably has to get going soon. Right, Keith?” 

“Yeah…,” Keith answers, and as if his phone was waiting for the perfect timing, Keith receives a text message from his brother asking when he’s going to come back with his tea. 

It’s then that Keith signals he actually _does_ have to go, and Andrea is packing him leftover food to take home before sending Lance out to escort him back to his car.

“Sorry about my mom. She means well I guess, but I think she just has a really bad nosiness gene or something,” Lance says once they’ve reached his porch and are making their way down the steps. 

“It’s alright.” It was certainly _not_ alright. Keith didn’t mind talking about his dad, but he was getting a strange sense of guilt from technically lying about his dad still being alive. It was the same unfamiliar feeling he felt when he lied to Lance about having plans even though he didn’t.

“By the way, don’t forget to make your own Tik Tok account soon. I’ve ran out of videos of you to post and I think it’s about time you start posting on your own, right?” Lance reminds him, gripping the edges of his hoodie and hopping from foot to foot as the sidewalk’s freezing cold seeps through his slippers. “Also…”

Lance pauses dramatically, leaning through the window of Shiro’s car to talk to Keith and gaining a deadly serious look on his face. “Um, I know my family is kind of annoying but if you feel like coming over again then you’re free to whenever. Ya know… if you feel like it.” 

It takes a second for Keith to register that Lance is being sincere, and another the shyness in his voice and the way he’s gnawing a hole right through his bottom lip, but when he flashes a small smile in his direction. “Thanks.”

All the way, he tries to garner how much of the past few hours were even real. 

The question regarding the reality of Keith’s afternoon remains unanswered for the remainder of the day, well after he’s returned home (without Shiro’s tea) just in time to swap his guitar case for his school backpack and head to his first class of the night. He’s still curious on his ride home, when sleep is poking at the lids of his eyes and he’s thinking about that bowl of gumbo from earlier with the hope his brother hasn’t eaten the leftovers. 

He thinks of Lance after discovering that yes, the gumbo is gone, and he’s faintly reminded of Lance telling him to finally start posting his own videos online. Keith isn’t sure what this means exactly, as far as details go, so he goes with whatever he thinks seems fit. 

Right before he goes to bed, he turns on the colorful LED lights he’d purchased for his room ages ago but never bothered with until then and pulls out his acoustic guitar, before deciding to quickly record the song that’s been playing in his head and streaming past his ears all day.

He grips at a tune easily, and searches up the lyrics that come to him in intervals before finding the proper chords and full song and then pressing record. 

It comes all at once, the opening verse followed by the chorus and then a bridge, and before he knows it he’s sang his way through the entirety of the song, or at least the pieces he’d been hearing throughout the entirety of the day. 

He doesn’t think to edit it at all either. He simply listens to the first few seconds of the recording, just barely catching himself sing the opening line of “ _Why_ _is your voice so sonically pleasing to me?_ ” before deciding that the acoustics are good enough to post.

And soon enough, his first video is posted, with him sheltered in the bay window of his room, fleshed out only by red colored lighting and the glow of his laptop offering him lyrics. Little does he know, as he crashes into his mattress moments later, that that post is the beginning to something a lot more complicated than he’d ever expect. 

\- -

The following morning, Keith was startled awake with a song he couldn’t recognize- loud and wailing at the earliest hour of the morning, when the sun was just barely peeking through the sky- and he managed to be greeted with a gut feeling that everything was wrong. 

If it wasn’t the rushing headache coursing through his nerves, or the binding tautness in his throat that made it hard to even swallow, it was the way the music irritated him like no other. On most mornings, when Lance’s music bursted through their still synced Spotify, he’d hook the music up to his headphones so that he wouldn’t have to hear the noise as he went on about his morning. But when a ballad-like tune with an achingly slow tempo blasts through Keith’s phone that Friday, he doesn’t turn down the volume or hook up his headphones. He turns over in bed, feeling groggy and empty, before decisively ending the Spotify session with Lance that had been going on for over a month. 

He doesn’t think much of it, either. He turns back over in bed, nursing the headache that’s now laden and fiery against his brain, and tries to find a way back to sleep. It’s hard, because even with the music being cut off he hears a soft hum of the melody in the back of his mind. But with slips of pink and purple and dashes of gold streaming through the window and past his curtains, he blinks his way back to sleep.

\- -

The second time Keith opens his eyes, it’s not by his own accord. He’s still under the influence of slumber when he’s shaken awake by Adam, who looks blurry and unclear for several seconds until Keith can bat away the dredges of sleep from his eyes by the tips of his eyelashes. 

“Keith?” Adam whispers, a hand on Keith’s shoulder and worry lining his expression. It’s hard to get a response out, in between the fierce headache and pounding in Keith’s chest, so he only murmurs a string of unintelligible words before Adam is moving his hand to Keith’s forehead. “Jesus, you’re burning up. I guess you must’ve caught Shiro’s cold. Well, I left soup on the stove and… I know what day it is so I already left your teachers an email letting them know you probably won’t be coming in today. And…”

Adam’s words go on, but it goes right through one ear and out the other with the heaviness in Keith’s chest steadily gaining weight the longer he’s awake. So he tries to thank his brother-in-law, but all that comes out is a hoarse cough and before he knows it Adam is gone. 

The remainder of the day seems to rush right past Keith afterwards. He feels despicably cold all over, despite the heat he feels against his pillow and the sweat rolling off his forehead from under his bangs. His throat is wound tight, dragging harsh coughs from his body that only grate his trachea further. He figures that spending half of his day by the lake the day before wasn’t the best idea, leading to his current illness. But it isn’t the runny nose or fieresome migraine that eats away at Keith the most. It’s the ill feeling that’s running against his skin as he gets a sense of dejavu. He feels low, despite himself, and he guesses maybe it’s from his sickness but another part of him tells him that it’s a lot more than that. 

He doesn’t manage to figure it out, though, until that evening. After sleeping most of the day away, not having the motivation or even desire to pull himself from his covers, he wakes up to Adam for a second time. 

“I brought you some tea and Tylenol,” Adam whispers, voice low as he sets a hot mug and small plastic cup full of thick blue liquid on Keith’s nightstand. “And… Pidge and one of her friends are here. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see anyone today but they apparently brought food so I let them in… hope that’s okay.” 

As if waiting to be mentioned, Pidge peeks her head through the doorway, cherry blonde locks of hair sticking up every which way and bags hanging under her eyes from behind her spectacles. 

“I’ll be with your brother if you need me,” Adam says before making his exit, just as Pidge enters, and Keith is just about to close his eyes again when he takes in the other figure he hadn’t noticed before. 

While Pidge removes her coat and drapes it against the back of Keith’s desk chair, Lance stands awkwardly by the door with a pinched expression and a plastic bag in his gloved hands. 

“Sorry to intrude,” Pidge starts, already taking a seat on Keith’s bed. “I know today is Friday but I thought maybe you could use the company today.” 

Something about their dynamic feels off, with Pidge being suspiciously polite and Lance being uncharacteristically quiet, so Keith does his best to sit up and focus in on whatever it is that’s causing a delicious smell to emanate from the bag Lance is holding.

“What’s that?” Keith coughs while eyeing the white plastic bag in Lance’s hands, and somehow it gets Lance to flush red before dropping the bag in Keith’s lap. 

“Well, I guess Adam told Matt that you and Shiro are under the weather and then Pidge told me so I thought- well I just thought you guys could use something hot.” 

Keith stares at Lance oddly, but only for a second before his stomach begins to churn and he realizes he hasn’t eaten all day, and before he knows it he’s peeling back the plastic and opening a white container to discover a bowl of okayu and a mix of steaming vegetables on the side. 

“Lance was very insistent that we get this specific soup so I hope you actually like it,” Pidge yawns, and it doesn’t go unnoticed the way Lance seems to glare at her accusingly. 

“Rice porridge,” Keith observes plainly before taking a bite, and he’s surprised to find how much easier it is to stay awake with the hot soup running down his pained throat. It’s not quite as good as Sobo’s, with the platter clearly being from a restaurant rather than homemade. And Keith seems to have lost all ability to taste as well. But the sentiment is still there, and it’s enough to give Keith the strength to stay awake as Lance finds his way onto the other side of his bed. 

“You guys aren’t scared of getting sick?” Keith whispers after a quarter of his meal is gone and he’s nearly drank his way through the tea Adam made him, his voice cracking under the weight of his cold. 

“I’m already sick,” Pidge says with a shrug, the sag of her eye bags and disorientation of her hair looking even worse once Keith notices the red of her nose and the droop of her words. 

“I already got sick earlier in the semester, remember? I think I’m, like, immune.” Keith isn’t so sure about the validity of Lance’s words, but he doesn’t call him out on it. Not just because it hurts to talk, but because he doesn’t want to give Lance a reason to take his leave. 

Maybe it’s selfish, or maybe it’s reasonable, but either way Keith doesn’t care. He’s glad to have his friends on either side of him, making his messy queen bed twice as warm as Pidge pulls out her laptop from her backpack to start a movie and Keith gobbles down his soup and vegetables. He doesn’t say anything, but he has a feeling his friends understand that their company does more good than harm, and that he’s grateful for their visit. He feels better already by the time he’s finished his tea and Lance has draped the three of them in a blanket that was hanging off the edge of the bed.

But a part of the day still feels dreadfully wrong, though Keith can’t quite pinpoint why. 

At least, not until nearly two hours later. It’s halfway through _Toy Story 3_ , the second movie of the night, after Keith’s soup and tea are long gone. Somewhere around the end of their first movie, Pidge fell asleep against Keith’s shoulder and Lance went suspiciously quiet. But Keith wasn’t complaining. The blue glow of Pidge’s laptop screen, on top of the whining of Keith’s space heater and the hot meal in his stomach made him indescribably comfortable. Mostly. 

He was halfway asleep, taking Pidge’s lead and leaning backwards, but there was still that pricking and waning against his mind. And then, just as Bud Lightyear started to get mugged and he had the mind to close his eyes, it came to him.

“Today’s my dad’s birthday…,” 

\- -

Keith thought he knew the basics of how time worked. There were twenty-four hours in a day, twelve hours on a clock, and time shifted every sixty seconds. The idea was simple enough, and he’d learned these principles back in kindergarten. But he suddenly had the mind to question these facts of life for the duration of his unbudging cold, and even in the days after. 

The second morning he wakes up still sick, he goes back to sleep and only wakes up when Shiro brings him dinner. This happens for a second day in a row, but then a day early turns into a week and he isn’t sure how. 

After five days of being ill, he can finally breathe through his nose, his throat doesn’t feel like it’s been shoved through a paper shredder, and his head doesn’t feel like it weighs ten tons. But he doesn’t exactly _feel_ better. Somehow, he actually feels worse as the days go on. 

“Keith?” Adam says at the doorway of his room, when he’s woken up on a day of the week he can’t place and at a time where the sky isn’t necessarily light or dark. It’s just there- stiff and bleak, like the pain stabbing at Keith’s nerves. “If you’re still feeling sick, maybe you should go to the doctor.”

He refuses the offer, and actually gets out of bed for the first time all week to show Adam that he _is_ feeling better. Physically, at least. He takes a shower and makes a show of clearing his bedside table that’s accumulated bowls and mugs, alongside tissues and cough drops, over the past few days before making himself a quick breakfast of oatmeal. But despite this display he puts up with his replenished strength to ease Adam and Shiro’s nerves, he’s completely drained from the inside out. And Shiro rights through him. 

“Hey,” Shiro says later that night, his arms crossed and brows strewn together like a well cared for cross stitch. “How are you feeling?” 

“Bad,” Keith answers plainly from his bed, trying to blink away the pain that resided against some other side of him that was past too many doors to ever truly be unlocked anytime soon. In spite of his best efforts, his sickness hadn’t subsided. It just moved elsewhere; from his head to his heart. And honestly, Keith would’ve much preferred another week of a head cold rather than a heart that was crippled and frosted by the innermost layers. It was simple enough to sip on Tylenol and Lipton tea for a few days to find yourself back in working condition when suffering from a common flu or something similar. However, even the hottest bowls of rice porridge couldn’t help the chilling ache that comes from deep inside when you’re wrapped in guilt. 

“Because of school?” Keith shakes his head at his brother’s question with a heavy sigh. “Because of your music?” Keith shakes his head again. 

“Because…because of Taka?” Keith already knew, simply based on the way that Shiro hesitated that his brother was well aware of the answer to his own question. That he’d long ago placed the reason why Keith could barely get up from bed. Shiro was observant enough, and even moreso, Shiro knew because he was feeling it, too. 

The silence that follows is answer enough, with Keith’s eyes beginning to sting as he remembers not for the first or last time since Friday that he’d missed his dad’s birthday for the first time. And he hadn’t _just_ missed it, either. He’d nearly forgotten completely, despite seemingly everyone around him recalling the date. Keith didn’t want to overthink it too much. He’d been so under the weather he’d slept most of the day away, and it’s not like he could do much to celebrate his father in that condition even if he had remembered. 

And yet, everytime Keith tried to push past the overbearing thought, a fresh sense of dread steamrolled through his brain and he was set back to his original disposition, if not worse. He could excuse himself for not remembering this year, but how long until he began to forget his dad’s birthday regularly? How long until he stopped visiting his grave altogether, and his grave went from being covered in fresh flowers every Friday to being coated with dead leaves and snow overrun with soot or cigarette butts? How many years until Keith forgot about his father completely? The thought scared him, causing him to grip his blankets tightly and tear through the thin skin of his lip. During times like this, the thought of one day forgetting the minor details of his father and moving past the sentiment of visiting his grave every week seemed inevitable. But Keith didn’t _want_ to forget; he didn't _want_ to see himself moving past his father’s grave on Friday afternoons. Not when he’d already lost so much as is. Not when his dad had already been forgotten by so many people, from parents, to lovers, to soulmates-

“Kira,” Shiro says briskly with a thick voice, though he speaks quietly. “Taka… You were sick Friday. I’m sure he knows that.”

It’s odd, for one, to see Shiro stumbling over words. With just the cinnamon scented candle on Keith’s desk and the light from the hallway to aluminate his brother’s face, only the sharps and junctions of him are visible, under thin yellow light. But Keith knows his brother well- knows the frames and curves of this man he’s known for the better half of his life, likely even better than he knows himself- and he can see the melancholy undertones of his eyes even in the pathetic lighting. He can see the indecisive stumbling of his voice better than he can hear it from the way Shiro’s lip quivers, and he knows that Shiro’s worrying over the same thoughts that’s been burdening him for days. And maybe he’s suffering even worse. 

The story of Takayuki Kogane is a short one, as far as Keith’s concerned, because it ended so abruptly. But it’s a story that’s hard on Shiro nonetheless, and Keith knows this better than anyone. 

Shiro and Keith’s father weren’t exactly raised together, with their gaping age difference and their parents’ opposing beliefs. Shiro’s parents came from the same household as Keith’s father’s, but somewhere along the family line tradition was lost in some places where it held on tightly in others. Which is to say, despite Takayuki Kogane being the older cousin of Takashi Shirogane, the ‘gane cousins weren’t exactly raised as family. Shiro’s parents lived in America and liked to think of themselves as progressive, while Takayuki’s parents were firm and stiff and held on dearly to their old family home in Karuizawa. Though they met at family functions, of course, and were familiar with one another. Shiro had unprecedented respect for Taka, even, with him being the closest person he had to a sibling in such a small family. But they didn’t really seem to take heed of each other until years after both of their childhoods had ended. 

Takayuki Kogane, as far as most family members were concerned, wasn’t a welcomed member in the home he’d grown up. He wasn’t welcome, period, actually. Not after moving to America and getting a woman nobody knew pregnant. It was bad enough to rush into a relationship with someone who wasn’t your soulmate against your parents’ wishes, but then going as far as trying to start a family with said non-soulmate? Well, that was just downright disrespectful to the ancestors who had generously gifted you your soulmark and the soulmate Takayuki never bothered to meet. At least, that’s how it looked to Takayuki’s parents from the outside looking in. 

This isn’t, however, how it looked to Takashi and his parents. So when Keith’s grandfather passed, and the entire family was invited for the memorial, Shiro and his parents made sure Keith’s dad got an invitation as well. Everyone, of course, was surprised when he actually showed up. And with a child but no wife on top of that. It was the centrifugal force of family drama that Keith wouldn’t actually learn about until several years later. But in the meantime, Takayuki Kogane passed. Before he found the soulmate he was still secretly trying to find, and before his son could understand why they never visited their family that lived thousands of miles away. 

It was an event that moved no one (“It was likely the curse of his ancestors, Kira’s likely cursed too,” Keith’s Sobo whispered into the phone once, after Shiro plucked Keith from the American foster care system and had him live with his grandmother.) Well, almost no one. Shiro cared, much to young Keith’s surprise. Shiro applied to the military to grieve the loss of his cousin away from his usual life while Keith spent a very long year with his barely tolerant grandmother, but it was because he cared and because it was the best he could do at such a young age. 

And now, nearly eight years later, the best Shiro could do was offer Keith an amiable hand complemented by troubled glances, patting Keith on the elbow. 

“Do you want to come with me Friday to visit him?” Shiro asks, now mirroring the way Keith chews into his lip. 

Keith deliberates the answer for several minutes, taking in the way the visit could likely do both him and his brother some good. But those heavy, overbearing thoughts from earlier return and he quickly closes his eyes before shaking his head no. 

He wanted to visit his father, he really did. But Keith needed just a little more time to dwell and grieve on the thoughts he usually didn’t let himself consider. 

So time passed ridiculously fast again, with Keith only improving marginally in the spaces in between. By Friday Keith felt horrible, but he didn’t want Shiro and Adam to worry more than they had to, so he made sure to shower and clean his room. Food tasted like sandpaper on his tongue, considering every part of him was already laden with regret and sorrow, but he chewed down half a bowl of tomato soup at the breakfast table before hurrying back to his room to wallow in peace while his housemates went to work. 

Shiro asked Keith again later that evening if he wanted to visit the graveyard with him, and when Keith denied the offer Shiro proposed a therapy session with Keith’s former shrink instead. This, out of everything that had occurred within the past month, motivated Keith the most. Not that he had anything against Dr. Kelly. Keith just didn’t want his brother to have to spend more money on him than necessary, and he didn’t want the pain that warped his mind to get the best of him. 

It wasn’t exactly easy, but Keith managed to make progress. He forced himself to get out of the bed to shower, did his laundry for the first time in weeks, and actually stayed awake instead of sleeping the day away. He usually spent this time watching various K-dramas or Criminal Minds on Netflix, but it was progress nonetheless. By Sunday night he was actually showing his face around the house for more than ten minutes at a time, and spent the evening reading with his brother and brother-in-law in their small living room. They hardly exchanged words, with Shiro and Adam too busy walking on eggshells on this version of Keith while Keith was too busy engrossed in his book, but it was the closest they’d had to normality since Takayuki’s birthday. 

That Monday, Keith almost felt like himself, and was able to find the motivation to answer the door and let Pidge and Nyma in when they visited that afternoon. 

“We thought you’d fallen off the face of the Earth,” Nyma sighed, looking genuinely surprised to see Keith alive and (almost) well when he allowed them to come in. 

“I sent you like a million texts and you haven’t even read a single one. I thought Shiro was lying when he said you weren’t dead and had finally snapped and killed you for eating all his cereal,” Pidge agreed. 

“I’m fine, guys,” Keith reassured, suppressing a smile. He had needed the time to recollect, but he couldn’t deny how much he missed his friends. So he made the big step of finally going outside that afternoon with them, even if it was only to grab a quick coffee and get his Saul caffeine fix. 

“A caramel latte?” Pidge questioned after they’d greeted Coran, who excitedly welcomed Keith back from what he’d assumed was a vacation, and the trio found seats in one of the cafe’s nooks. “Are you sure you’re not, like, a clone Shiro made to replace the Keith who usually eats his Special K?” 

“I just wanted to try something different,” Keith snorts with an eyeroll, though the drink wasn’t really all that different at all. He’d been ordering occasionally since Lance had ordered it for him weeks ago, and he’d grown accustomed to it just as he’d accustomed to Lance himself. Both the drink and the boy were somewhat of an acquired taste, being a whole lot _more_ than Keith was used to, but something that overall wasn’t unpleasant. And the thought of this makes Keith miss Lance. At least a little bit. 

Not enough to actually seek him out, though. He doesn’t finally look at his phone when he gets home, but rather takes a glance at his emails on his laptop and starts working on the homework that Pidge had told him Allura sent him. It’s a lot, to say the least, but he manages to speed through most of it and decides he’s ready to go back to school that Friday.

He misses the normalcy of everything- having work, having places to be, actually _leaving_ the house instead of being forced to look at Adam and Shiro’s worried faces that are spilling with words left unsaid by the corners of their lips. He knows they’re worried about him missing school, about the silence coming from his room when there’s usually guitar notes passing through the thin walls. And he wants it all to subside. 

  
So that Friday, he puts on the bravest face he’s worn yet, and decides he isn’t going to miss another day of his usual schedule or give the people he cared about any reason to worry. Not when he knew he was feeling better; maybe not perfectly fine, but still better. At least, enough so to wake up before Adam and Shiro had left for work and share a breakfast with them. A part of him got the sense that maybe he was faking his smile and all of the motions he was going through was for show, for the sake of the people at the breakfast table with him, but he ignored the thought of such and did his best to power through the day. He did his usual chores, and even made an early dinner for himself and his roommates before leaving for band practice. 

He managed to order a coffee from the Five Lions, walk all the way to his usual studio space where he expected the door to be open, before realizing that it was Friday. And there were no band practices on Friday. _Damnit._

He considered going to his teacher’s offices to discuss his recent absence with them, only to recall he didn’t have class on Fridays, either. 

_Maybe this is a sign…_ , Keith thought, on his walk home, and realized it _was_ a sign. It was a Friday, and there was only one thing he usually did on that day of the week. 

Before he knew it, he was hauling ass to the nearest train station and making his way to his childhood neighborhood to visit his dad. 

A part of him- okay, the _majority_ of him- felt nervous visiting his father’s grave for the first time in weeks. He felt as though he was trespassing almost, walking on burial grounds that were no longer open to him. Not when he’d forgotten his own father’s _birthday._ Like, who does that? 

Keith starts to think that maybe it was a mistake- coming outside, trying to forget the fact that he, well, _forgot_ , and the fact that he was losing bits and pieces of his father everyday. But just as he gets off his train and heads to the bus station, considering maybe he should just turn back around and take the next train home, he passes a shop with a bright red sign in its sign reading: _Valentine’s Day Sale, All Bouquets 40% Off,_ and he second guesses his second guessing. 

One small bouquet of flowers later and with newfound determination, Keith travels the rest of the way silently to the cemetery where his father lies six feet deep. He can’t help but feel cold past the resilient February winds, and grips his flowers a little tighter when his bus reaches his stop. 

Like the day he met Lance for the first time, he gets that sudden fear that he doesn’t measure up. His dad can’t scrutinize or judge him from Heaven, but he gets the idea that visiting his father’s grave right then isn’t right. Not when he forgot to on the _one_ _day_ that it was most relevant. Not when he’d already missed visiting his dad two weeks in a row now. It felt like he’d sullied a fragment of the bond he had with his deceased parent now that his streak had been broken. 

For a second, and then an additional five, Keith hesitates. He wants to turn around and go home, but instead he garners the strength he’d been slowly gathering and replenishing to get him to walk the next couple feet towards his father's tomb. He’d come all this way, and a shallow, buried deep part of him knew he wouldn’t be able to stop beating himself about the situation unless he tried to mend the relationship that felt so muddled. He’s not sure he can do it- he’s not sure the words that are sitting on his tongue will be enough, or that a simple visit can do anything to wash away the burning guilt pooling against his intestines. 

But when he approaches his father’s tomb, that contrition dissipates. Not entirely, of course; there’s still remorse and a wish to have changed what happened (or didn’t happen?) two weeks ago. But the sight of his dad’s tomb, and the overall familiarity of it, is like a cool balm to a burning wound.

So he takes a seat, and talks things through. 

\- -

Within minutes, Keith’s freezing by the torso and below from sitting on the frozen ground spewing whatever comes to mind to his father, but he pays the cold no mind. He’s too caught up in what he has to say, and runs through a series of apologies and explanations and updates until his mouth has run drier than the Sahara. But even then, he doesn’t want to leave. He thinks more words might come, so he closes his eyes and sits quietly as if to make up for the past two visits he missed. 

He could’ve sat there for hours like that, his mind empty and his body lax in spite of everything that had been burdening him that month. However, he doesn’t get the chance to sit stewing in his own fruitless thoughts for very long. After a moment or two, Keith hears the crunch of partially melted snow and half-frozen grass from a few feet away, and just as he pops an eye open a familiar face questions, “Keith?”

In situations like this, Keith’s fight or flight instincts were written into the narrative before his brain could even catch up with what was happening. There had been more than enough times when someone would walk in on something that they weren’t supposed to see, or uncovered a sample of information that was just a little too personal that either led to Keith fleeing the scene or bringing his tightened fists into the mix. It was the reason James Griffin ended up with missing patches of hair and a bloody nose two years ago, and had Lance’s mother been… well, _Lance’s mother,_ he would’ve completely shut her down after bringing up his parents and bolted to save him the awkwardness of the situation. But for once, Keith doesn’t go bounding off or flip up the chip on his shoulder; he stays right put and looks Lance in the eye. Maybe it’s because he’s a bit subdued from the long week he’s had, or because he’s looking at another side of Lance- a Lance with bags _and_ carry-on luggage under his eyes, ashen skin, and hair that looks as though it hasn’t seen a comb in a good day or two. Or maybe it’s because Keith sees the worry lines across his forehead and frown on his chapped lips, and the sight is something that shakes him to the core like he’s one of Coran’s nunvill milkshakes.

Still, that’s not to say he wasn’t surprised to see Lance there.

“What are you doing here?” Keith asks, only to realize Lance has said the same thing just as he did, and they both smile at one another timidly before voiding eye contact. 

If the definition of disconcerting had an example picture in the dictionary, it’d be a snapshot of that moment. Keith had suffered through more than his fair of awkward moments, but he’d never felt so stiff or at a loss of what to say as he tried to stumble for an explanation or excuse that would clarify why he was sitting at a grave alone at the tail end of winter. And things only managed to intensify when he looked back to Lance and realized his friend was already piecing things together for himself, brown eyes tacked onto the tomb of Takayuki.

“Kogane…?” Lance murmurs to himself, before Keith can even get two words in, and then his face is flushing and his hands are tightly wringing the bouquet Keith just then notices he’s been holding. “Oh is- is this your uncle? Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude or anything I’ll just go I-”

“Lance, it’s okay,” Keith cuts in, sitting up straighter and then biting his lip as he deliberates his next year. “You can stay if you want.” 

He doesn’t actually expect Lance to take a seat, but then again the younger teen is full of surprises, because he didn’t expect him to be there in the first place. 

For a few minutes it’s quiet, with the only sound being their breaths escaping from their lips in thin puffs and the rustle of the plastic against the bouquet Lance still holds tightly. 

Keith thinks over what he could possibly say or do in this situation, and then contemplates whether or not there’s even anything he _could_ say during a moment like this. But as per usual, Lance is a step ahead of him and beats him to the punch. 

“What was he like… if you don’t mind me asking,” he starts, and when Keith sends him a look asking for clarification, he adds on with trepidation, “your uncle, I mean.” 

Keith stares at his father’s grave for a second, before deciding that he isn’t even quite sure. What _was_ his dad like? 

“Oh… He was, um, nice. But he kind of always had a lot going on, even though it was just me and him for a long time, so sometimes I felt like he wasn’t there even when he was,” Keith says while staring at his nervously knotted fingers, rigid from the cold, and then looks back to Lance with a sad smile. “And he’s my dad, by the way. Not my uncle.” 

Lance blinks for a few seconds, the gears in his head clicking and churning behind his pupils, and then his face is twisting with distress all over again. 

“Shit, I’m- dang, sorry,” he stumbles, scratching at the back of his head with blunt nails. 

“It’s okay, Lance, I promise,” Keith reassures in an attempt to verbally iron out the furrow in his friend’s brow. “He died a long time ago and… I don’t know.” 

_And what?_ Keith thinks to himself. _And it doesn’t hurt as much? It doesn’t affect me everyday?_

He couldn’t deny he’d pretty much just had a depressive episode over the stresses of having a deceased father, and all of the heavy baggage that came with it, but Lance didn’t press that part of Keith’s words sentence further.

Instead, he asked, “So you’ve been living with your brother since?” 

“Pretty much, aside from the year when he was in the military and I lived with Sobo,” Keith shrugged, careful to gloss over the intermission between these events when Keith was forced to live in foster care until his family actually came to find his father had died and Keith was without local family members to care for him. He was willing to open up about many things, but that painful duration of time was one of which he didn’t think he’d ever willingly bring up. “Shiro’s technically my cousin, but my dad was the closest thing he had to a brother when they were younger so he was always trying to get him to visit him and my aunt and uncle in SoCal. And then one day he called and the number was disconnected and he eventually… figured out why.”

Keith worries his lip, considering he’s said too much, but decides he doesn’t care if that’s the case. He isn’t sure if Lance is the best person to talk to about his personal problems with, but he’s never felt comfortable opening up regarding the topic until now and the purging of information feels… nice. 

“What about your mom?” Lance asks, and when Keith flinches he surpasses his own question with. “Never mind, that was insensitive, you don’t have to-”

“I never met her,” Keith answers anyway, if only to save Lance the embarrassment, and sighs thinking of the woman he never knew. “My dad says she left to find her soulmate, but my grandma liked to say it was part of some big curse from our ancestors. Like, being with someone you weren’t tied to was bound to cause problems. I didn’t believe her obviously ‘cause that’s dumb but now…” _Now my dad’s dead, never having even met his soulmate, and I don’t even have one._

Keith runs a stray thumb over his empty wrist, recalling the way his grandmother had complained about being stuck with her cursed grandson when Shiro insisted she spent time with him. Keith had wanted to stay with Shiro’s parents, his aunt and uncle that at the very least hadn’t given his dad living hell while he was still alive, but in the end Keith had ended up spending a year in Japan with his petty elder. Eventually they learned to tolerate each other, somewhat marginally, and his Sobo grew patient and understanding where Keith became appreciative. But this didn’t erase the words she’d said to his dad and whispered when she thought Keith wasn’t listening, no matter how hard he tried to scrub away the memory; it was still ingrained in Keith’s mind that his parents had given way to a confounded son who wasn’t blessed by his predecessors, and likely never would be. 

“My parents weren’t soulmates either,” Lance offers upon spotting the way Keith stares accusingly at where his arm should have a thin black mark under his coat sleeve, and it brings Keith’s ears to attention. 

“But… your moms-”

“Are technically my parents, yeah, but only one of them is related to me biologically. My mom met Andrea when she was younger and didn’t know how to tell her parents her soulmate was a woman so she ended up marrying my dad, who was, um, less than perfect? I guess they were probably happy at some point since they had me and my older siblings but one day he left and somehow she found Mama again and… yeah.” Lance coughs at the end of his long-winded explanation, face burning bright after pretty much his entire family’s business on blast, but he doesn’t hesitate too long before continuing. “My point is, though, I was born from parents who weren’t soulmates too and I’m fine and so are my parents, physically anyway, so that whole curse thing isn’t something to worry about. No offense to your grandma.” 

Keith stares at Lance oddly, unsure of the validity of his words considering they come from completely different families and lived under different contexts, but he appreciated the offering nonetheless. 

“Thanks.” 

“No, uh, problem.” There’s a beat of silence, and then Lance cuts through the cold air again. “Can I talk to your dad?” 

Keith’s eyebrows bunch automatically at the peculiar question, but this doesn;t keep him from nodding. 

“Hey, Mr. K,” Lance greets slowly, looking to Keith as if to ask for permission, and doesn’t continue until he’s offered a small smile. “Um, sorry that you’re… dead. But I’m glad I got to meet you today, and Happy Valentine’s Day. And uh… thanks for making your son. You did a really good job, so, like, sorry you aren’t here to see him. I think you’d be proud.” 

Lance’s voice cracks over his short spiel a few times, but the sincerity is as clear as crystal and his intentions are even more transparent when he drags a lily from his bouquet and drops it on Takayuki’s grave. Or, at least, Keith thinks they are. It’s why his eyes begin to sting and he feels wetness roll off his cheeks in spite of himself.

“Sorry, was it something I said? I didn’t-,”

“No, you’re good,” Keith laughs, rubbing at his face. “I just, I don’t know, I haven’t been here with anyone in a long time…” _I haven’t seen anyone talk about, let alone to, my dad in a long time._

“Me either, I usually just visit on holidays,” Lance shrugs, and then quickly corrects himself. “At, like, the cemetery in general, not particularly your dad’s grave.” 

“Who are you visiting?” Keith inquires timidly, unsure of if he’s allowed to ask such questions but more than ready to shift the focus of the conversation away from him. 

“My abuelita,” Lance says with a faraway gaze, and picks at his cuticles before smiling gingerly. “Er, wanna meet her?” 

Keith is more than happy to oblige, even if his stomach knots itself quickly. Even if Lance stands first, extends a large hand in his direction to help him up, and then proceeds to drop Keith when their hands actually meet. 

“What the hell?”

“Sorry! I just, God, your fingers are _freezing,_ ” Lance explains quickly, and then perks up quickly before reaching into his bulging coat pocket and dragging something out. “I just finished these yesterday and they’re kinda sloppy cause I’ve been sick all week but uh-here.” 

When Keith finally stands, no thanks to Lance, he’s met with a pair of knitted gloves extended towards him and Keith accepts them slowly, unsure of the meaning behind the gesture. “What’s this?” 

“Well, um, I noticed you always wear fingerless gloves- which are cool but c’mon, that’s obviously out of season right now- so I thought I’d make you some that are _actually_ warm,” Lance rushes as Keith begins to flip them over, revealing small red buttons. “And I know you said your favorite color is red, but when I saw that yarn at Joann’s I just had to buy it ‘cause it matches your eyes and-uh.” Lance seems to short-circuit as he backtracks through his words, but Keith is hardly paying much attention anyways. 

He’s too busy inspecting the knitted gloves, made of a yarn that’s a cool gray color with purple undertones, and he’s slightly stupefied that they’re actually handmade. And specifically _for_ him.

It makes it easy for him to quickly slip off his old leather gloves and replace them with Lance’s gifted pair, before whispering a sheepish, “Thankyou.” 

“No problem! They, uh, don’t call me the Tailor for nothing,” Lance says vibrantly while picking up the flowers he’d earlier rested on the ground, despite the shy dusting of pink against his golden brown cheeks, and quickly guides Keith to his grandmother’s grave. 

Keith is still marveling at the gloves, and the actual coziness of them and, well, _every_ aspect regarding the offering the entire walk as Lance chatters aimlessly, and Keith can’t even find himself annoyed because he’s grateful. 

He’s grateful and happy, and that makes it easy to listen to Lance introduce his older brother, Luis, when the time comes and lend a sympathetic hug when Lance goes eerily quiet. It makes it easy for him to agree when Lance insists they’ve been in the cold too long afterwards, and for him to follow Lance to a local Starbucks for coffee. It makes it easy for him to admit that his new signature drink is caramel lattes when Lance notes he didn’t order a plain black coffee.

But somehow it doesn’t make the complications that present themselves later on anymore easy to deal with. 

\- -

Said complications, of course, present themselves just as Keith believes he’s finally got his shit together… mostly. 

The weekdays following Keith and Lance running into each other, Keith decides to dedicate all of his spare time to being more attentive in school and trying to catch up on the assignments he missed. It’s fairly easy, with his teachers being mostly understanding after he provides a genuine explanation behind his absences and Allura comes over twice that week to help him with the lectures he forfeited in the courses they shared. 

And, upon Lance’s insistence, Keith actually looked at his phone for the first time in weeks and caught up with the things he’d missed. Which, of course, was a lot. 

For the first time since he’d accidentally blown up online over a random fight, Keith had hundreds of notifications, which was definitely overwhelming and took hours to sift through. 

Somehow Lance managed to catch him off-guard for seemingly the millionth time when Keith realized half of the notifications were from Lance alone, but he couldn’t say he was particularly upset over this revelation. The oldest messages are interesting, with Lance unceremoniously losing his shit at the video Keith posted on his TikTok account weeks ago, with a flurry of compliments that were certainly… interesting. Later came screenshots of comments that Lance thought were worth noting, as if Keith couldn’t see the comments on his own video, followed by praise and excitement due to Keith gaining thousands of likes in a short span of time. 

But the more recent the messages were actually… harder to read. Not because Lance had a bad texting style or anything (although he did use a lot of emoticons Keith struggled to decipher), but because Keith had to physically fight off an insistent blush from creeping upon his face when Lance made it abundantly clear that he cared about Keith’s wellbeing.

**Lance ♡**

**hey! pidgeon told me you’re still sick so I hope you feel better soon :( also idk if you’re up for it but when I’m sick i like to watch movies so here’s a link to a bunch of free Ghibli movies if you want it <3 **

[ _Ghibli.drive_ ](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B59gfGnVa_i-fkZ1QWpROVhSanIyQWdtTjhnN0lnMnpTekw3cDQtcFNvLVBGUGlyZXZXbms)

_02/03/20_

**Okay Pidge told me not to bother you but I also made you a playlist… in case you want something to listen to while you get your sick sleep. Idk, i just sleep better when I go to bed listening to my everything and stuff… i also included nickelback to make for all the times i skipped it during our spotify session lol. get well soon! (i included that song too, fyi) (•◡•)**

**_Spotify.link_ **

_2/04/20_

**Okay, I’m going to assume u either turned off your read receipts or u aren’t seeing these but!! When you /do/ see these just know I’m so impressed!! You have so many followers on TikTok holy heck (not more than me tho hehe :P) Double also… uh i miss you so get well faster lol? ᕙ(`▿´)ᕗ**

_2/10/20_

**Okay I am officially worried sick. Literally. I got sick too (again) so now we’re twins lmao. But also!! The band (plus me and hunkers) made a group chat so like if your phone is blowing up when you FINALLY bother to look at it that’s why. But uh yeah… miss u xxx**

**Wait that was weird ignore that last part lol**

**(The xxx not the miss you I def miss u! Ssnbdj)**

There’s lots of texts in between this slur of messages, and several that follow after, with Lance mentioning how jealous he is that Nyma and Pidge got to see Keith before he did and with Lance pretty much updating him on every little thing. But the quantity doesn’t negate the quality of the messages, and Keith has to ignore the way his heart does mini somersaults at every one. He can’t pinpoint why every other syllable Lance has sent gets his blood running hot, so he pretends not to notice and moves on to the next layer of messages in his phone that he’s missed. 

He sees messages from basically every other person he knows, and even comes to find the group chat Lance mentioned, but only opens it to quickly mute it before it can bury his poor phone with an overflow of notifications. The only person he bothers to respond to is Pidge, who actually comes across the most worried despite her sparse words. She doesn’t send much, but over the span of a few days she grows more curt about him missing band practice, and he knows it has nothing to do with the music. So he shoots her a text, which she responds to immediately, and they spend the next few minutes texting back and forth until she says her lunch period is about to end. 

For the remainder of the afternoon Keith tries to focus on his homework, as exhausting as it may be, and decides that if he skips band practice he’ll be able to be completely caught up by his next class. So that’s exactly what he plans to do- spend the next couple of hours working until his night classes start. Unfortunately for him, his friends seem to have other plans.

Just when Keith’s brain starts to feel fried from finding derivatives for his calculus homework for far too long, and he’s considering maybe taking a break to grab a snack from the Five Lions, he hears a loud knock on the door, and when he opens it he’s not exactly surprised to see Nyma and Allura standing in the doorway with shy smiles on their faces and drinks in their hands.

“Hey!” Nyma greets, sidestepping Keith to enter with Allura at her heels. 

“Um, come in?” Keith replies sarcastically as the girls make themselves comfortable in the foyer.

“Long time no see,” Allura chimes as Keith closes the door. 

“You saw me yesterday…,” he corrects, recalling Allura visiting to help him through one of his assignments, only for his words to go ignored as Allura settles on the couch and Nyma begins to hand him one of the drinks she’s holding. 

“We got you a coffee!” Nyma says, but when Keith goes to accept the drink she takes a step back. “But you can’t have it unless you come with us.” 

“What?” he calls before folding his arms, looking from Nyma to Allura with a reproached expression. 

“We’re all going to my house to brainstorm a theme for our next music video and since you make up a quarter of the band’s members you kinda need to come with. Besides, you look like you could use the break,” Allura clarifies and looks Keith up and down as if to accentuate her point, arching an eyebrow at his questionable outfit of sweats and mismatched socks. 

“You’d know this if you actually looked at your phone for one,” Nyma complains with an eyeroll, and Keith ignores her in favor of explaining that he’s already made plans for the day.

“Sorry, I can’t. I’ve already missed way too many classes and I’m still trying to-”

“We’ll order pizza,” Allura interrupts, and just like that Keith is on board.

It doesn’t take long for Keith to slip into a change of clothes and grab his things before heading outside with his friends. But he starts to question his own decision when he’s met with Hunk’s large van against the curb in front of his apartment.

“Get in, losers,” Pidge deadpans after opening the door, despite the smile making its way onto her face, and soon enough the small trio have climbed aboard the colorful van. 

Keith ends up settling in between Pidge and Allura, quietly making note of Lance who’s stationed himself in the passenger’s seat and taken the role of playing obnoxious 80’s music on the old van’s cassette player. 

Keith doesn’t know why, but he gets an uneasy sense of dejavu when Lance begins to hum his way through Two Princes and sing along to Janet Jackson, so he’s grateful when the group quickly arrives in front of Allura’s house. 

“Are you sure you live _here_?” Hunk questions after driving through a gated community upon Allura’s instructions and stopping in front of one of the large Hyde Park houses that Keith passed by regularly but couldn’t even imagine actually entering. Most of the houses on the block seemed to be older structures, but the aging brick and stone exteriors only seemed to complement the manicured lawns and frosted ivy growing along the sides, along with the overall girth of the buildings. Allura’s house in particular wasn’t exactly the largest, but it sat on the edge of the street and appeared to stand out the most, with it having a large iron gate in front of it and an entirely dark exterior. The only way Keith could imagine to describe it was as a haunted mini mansion, like if Dracula had an urban vacation home or something. 

“Yes, I’m sure” Allura answered, already hopping out of the vehicle and looking perplexed as to why her friends approached the building with resistance. 

If everyone wasn’t already on edge about the building, they certainly were when Allura began to unlock the door with a large black key, only for the door to be snatched open and Coran to pop his head through the doorway. 

Keith barely muffled a scream in surprise, but Lance failed to suppress his yelp, causing Coran to laugh while stepping aside. 

“Sorry if I scared you number three! I just heard you all coming in the driveway,” Coran chirped, followed by him taking a sip from the glass he held in his hand full of a thick red substance. 

“Thanks, Coran,” Allura answered completely unphased while her friends scrutinized the large foyer and the… _unique_ decorative choices. 

After being guided to a nearby closet where everyone disposed of their coats, Keith took in the dark wallpaper that lined the walls, the amethyst chandelier that hung overhead, as well as the black marble along the floor. And the house only continued to grow more and more eerie as Allura guided her group of her friends deeper into the house to the kitchen. 

“Hey, ‘Lura!” a young girl greeted upon their entrance, rising from her seat at the kitchen island to introduce herself as Allura’s neighbor, Romelle, who’d also apprently been bribed into arriving with promises of a free lunch. Introductions around were short, not that Keith was exactly paying attention; while everyone was gathered in a small circle talking, Keith was busy taking in the furniture in the room and noting that just like the entryway, it was dark. Keith himself had a sensible appreciation for monochrome or dull colors, as could be deduced from his wardrobe holding a surplus of plain black tees and jeans, but as far as he could tell Allura’s house seemed to be bordering excessive. 

As if his thoughts were being read, Pidge came up behind him and whispered, “Is it me, or is Allura’s place giving major _Adam’s Family Values_ vibes?” 

Keith swiftly nodded in agreement, but before he could divulge further into the conversation with his younger friend, Allura was offering snacks from her pantry and laying out her reason for inviting them all over. 

Apparently her house actually belonged to her grandfather in the ninetie, and she’d only moved in with Coran two years prior, making most of the home old and untouched. 

“As you can guess, it’s pretty big and Coran and I never really bothered to go through everything since it’d be a pretty big job for just two people. So I was kind of hoping you’d all help me finally unpack some of th rooms we never bothered with, and maybe we’ll find something we can use in a music video.” 

Keith was a bit apprehensive about spending his day digging through old boxes that probably belonged to vampires, but he didn’t want to possibly devoiding a free meal and disappointing Allura, so by the end of the hour he was stuck in the attic with Hunk, Lance, and Pidge while Allura, Romelle, and Nyma split off to go through the unused bedrooms. 

“Alright, I feel like we’re all thinking it so I’m just going to say it,” Lance started after uncovering the fifth hand mirror they’d discovered that day, this one holding cobwebs and a dusty emerald decorating the middle of its frame. “Allura and Coran are _definitely_ vampires. I mean look at this!” Lance dug further into the box he was unpacking and took out an old hairbrush made of the same dark metal as the hand moirror.

“It _would_ explain Allura’s hair. And whatever this is...,” Hunk agreed, poking through a box labeled ‘kitchen’ and pulling out a silver goblet that looked like something straight out of a _Game of Thrones_ episode. 

“I was thinking the place was just haunted, but yeah, sounds about right to me,” Pidge added on, only for her to pause in filtering through nicknacks and display a sense of worry in her eyes from behind her large glasses. “Do you think they invited us over here to eat us? Like in Escape the Night?” 

“Maybe, but hopefully I get my pizza first,” Keith droned, causing his friends to snort despite him being dead serious. 

After what feels like forever, when Keith is sick of cobwebs and what he swears might’ve been a bat somewhere, Lance decides to take a break in favor of coming to the bathroom. 

“Keith, come with me,” he insists, catching Keith off guard. “If I get taken by a ghost or something I want a witness.”

Keith isn’t so sure about ghosts, but he’s grateful for the excuse to stop inhaling the asbestos in the large attic, and he quickly follows Lance down the ladder and through the hall. 

“Okay, so, question,” Lance starts after a beat, while Keith is trying to rub off the the soot on his hands and keep from sneezing due to the dust from earlier. “Is it me or was that Romelle chick totally hot?” 

Keith arches an eyebrow Lance’s way, unsure of the topic of conversation let alone why Lance would choose _him_ to talk about it with, but he does his best not to roll his eyes before saying, “I guess?” 

“You guess?”

“I mean, she’s not really my type…” 

“Totally hot isn’t your type?” Lance questions, undoubtedly scandalized at the revelation that Keith apparently didn’t find random strangers “hot.”

“Uh,” he starts, unsure of how to end this conversation considering he never really wanted to start it. “It’s more of the girl part… I guess.” 

“Oh... _oh._ ” Lance starts chewing at his lip, eyes blown wide, as though this key piece of information is about as shocking as Miley Cyrus’s 2015 VMAs performance. 

“Is that a problem?” Keith frowns, eyebrows knitting together in impatience as Lance’s walking starts to slow to a near halt, and wondering what to make of Lance’s reaction.

“Huh? No, no! I just-obviously I don’t- I mean I’m surprised but, well not surprised I guess, um,” Lance struggles for several seconds, going from dumbfounded to teeming with words, before he eventually resigns with, “I mean, uh, I listen to ‘Sweater Weather.’”

Keith focuses on Lance for a moment, taking in the way he begins to nervously chew at his hoodie string and pick at his knuckles, in hopes that this will give him a clue as to why Lance felt the need to bring up his music preferences for some reason. Keith remains lost and without an answer, but he ultimately decides that Lance’s response could’ve been a lot worse. “Cool.”

There’s a strain in the conversation after that, with Lance clearly wrenching his brain for what to say and Keith trying to guess what the next outlandish thing that comes from the boy’s mouth might be. Through all of this thinking and guessing, they don’t notice Allura approaching them down the hall, and nearly bump directly into her before stopping in front of her in surprise, words left unsaid still hanging between the two of them. 

“Oh, hey!” she chimes, swinging a black ring full of metal keys around her wrist like a mini hoola-hoop and wearing a large smile under her burgundy lipstick. “I was just heading to the attic to see if you guys wanted to help me out with something.”

“What is it?” Keith asks while Lance follows Allura’s long skinny fingers as they toy and twist around the ring of keys. 

“Well, I’ve been meaning to clean up a particular bedroom but Romelle and Nyma bailed. Apparently they think my house is haunted, crazy right?” she laughs, while already leading them to said bedroom. Keith and Lance share an equally vexed expression, but only laugh weakly in response to Allura.

Keith is second-guessing his choices in following a possible vampire to her crib, lured in with pepperoni pizza he’s starting to think will never come, but comes to believe it’s all been worth it when Allura unlocks a large golden door to reveal a room covered in old instruments. 

“Woah…,” Lance whispers as the trio enters, all three sharing equally astonished looks. 

“This is where I usually go to practice,” Allura says, removing a large tarp in the corner of the room to give way to a grand piano. “I know it’s a mess, but I just never knew what to do with all my grandpa’s stuff so only half of it is actually tended to.”

Saying the room was a mess was a _massive_ trivialization to the pools of boxes and instrument cases that littered half of the room; while one half of the large room was organized and lined with instruments against the wall, the other side held a plethora of items of varying sizes and shapes. 

“All of this belonged to your grandfather?” Keith questions, opening one of the guitar cases stacked inside the room and finding a guitar that was probably older than him. 

“Just the stuff that’s packed up. I took my dad’s old things with me when I moved here, but I never felt right about touching Pawpaw’s,” Allura explains, settling on the floor with a box and going to open it but hesitating. “I never really knew him that well so it always felt kind of, I don’t know, sacred?” 

“Well your Pawpaw has mad taste,” Lance concurs, coming across a glass case holding a unique guitar that’s set apart from the rest of the items. “Anybody who’s managed to get their hands on on a Flying V is cool in my book.” 

“I’m surprised you even know what that is,” Keith responds curiously, and immediately takes note of the way Lance goes to chew on his thumbnail.

“Oh, um, my brother really liked instruments and stuff so he kind of taught me about them,” he responds after a minute, and Allura sits up quickly. 

“So does that mean you can play?” she questions, eyes bright, and Lance shrugs. 

“Not really, just the piano kind of?” 

Allura and Keith share a mutually understanding expression, and before Lance knows it he’s settled in front of the grand piano at the center of the room with Allura seated next to him. 

“Just play a little something? You can’t just say you can play and then _not_ show us!” Allura insists, causing Lance to frown. 

“I said kind of…,” he sighs, though his argument doesn’t stand for long. One look at Keith, who’s leaning against the piano while staring at him with great interest veiled under large black eyes, and suddenly he’s caving. “But fine. Just… know I don’t really play in front of people.” 

Keith thinks to question what this means, with the insinuation that Lance _does_ play just not with an audience, but before he can get the question out Lance’s belting out a series of keys. 

His fingers are timid at first, as though they’re finding their way across rough and uncharted territory, but quickly they find their territory as Lance makes his way through a song Keith doesn’t recognize. But while Keith doesn’t think he’s heard the melancholy melody before, Allura surely has. After the first few notes, coming from under Lance’s thin fingers and ringing through the room, Allura is singing along. 

“ _I’ve waited a hundred years, but I’d wait a million more for you_ …” 

Keith lets his eyes flutter to a close upon listening to Lance’s fingers beat across the keys, hearing D majors trade in for B flats and F sharps dance into C minors. He feels as though he’s being transported somewhere he’s never been before but would like to call home, as his friends fill the room with music that feels warm and sweet against his ears. He’s sure he could probably fall asleep listening to the music; that is, until Lance’s finger begin to pick up pace into the chorus, and he starts harmonizing with Allura. 

“ _Your love is my turning page, where only the sweetest words remain,_ ” Lance sings with only slight hesitation, but just like his playing they become sure fire and unfiltered with time. 

Keith was prepared to hear Lance play, but hearing him sing was an entirely different story. A book from a library that was in a whole other _country_ , actually. If Lance’s playing felt like home, his singing felt like a whole other part of Keith. Almost entirely too _much,_ actually. 

Keith is sure he doesn’t know the song Lance is singing along with Allura, and yet Keith can hear it clear as day in his head as though he’s written the song himself. It’s as though some deeper part of Keith is singing along- no, further than that. It’s as though Keith’s singing right along _with_ Lance, voice matching exactly and all. But Keith definitely _isn’t_ singing; he’s tight-lipped and unblinking, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to measure the surrealness of the situation. He can’t make out why he hears Lance so clearly in his head, why it’s like Lance is singing directly from his inside-out rather than the other way around, or why Lance’s voice echoes in his brain over Allura’s when they’re harmonizing perfectly. 

He’s still stewing over this when the song comes winding closed, with Allura allowing Lance to wrap up the last verse alone, and the lyrics simmer down from Keith’s head just as Lance goes quiet. 

There’s a thin stillness in the air that immediately follows. Lance’s ears are burning crimson, Allura is sporting a cheery grin on her face like Christmas has come early, and Keith is… well, Keith is just really fucking confused. 

“Wow,” Allura speaks first, clasping her hands together. “How come you never mentioned you could play like that? _And_ sing? You’re so talented!” 

“Thanks,” Lance snorts, biting at his hoodie string before turning his gaze to Keith. “What’s the verdict, Keef?”

“What?” Keith manages, eyes focused on Lance but not really seeing him. He was too busy trying to piece together the past five minutes and make sense of it even when it made no sense to him at all. Listening to Lance had been as though he’d been singing directly from Keith’s insides, rather than in front of him, so needless to say he was a bit shaken by the entire affair. 

“Yeesh, was I that bad?” Lance laughs, pulling an eye roll from Allura and a bleak expression from Keith. “But, um, I kind of have to really use the bathroom.” 

“Oh! It’s two doors to the right,” Allura supplies quickly, and soon enough Lance is stalking out of the room, leaving Allura at her old gold piano while Keith stews over his thoughts and the echo of Lance’s voice. Even then, with Lance now out of the room, he heard the fresh hum of the song from mere minutes ago and he couldn’t get it to stop. 

“You’re quiet,” Allura observes rather than questions, causing Keith to pay her half a piece of mind. 

“Yeah, I guess he was pretty good.” Allura stares after Keith for a second before patting the now empty seat at the piano’s bench next to her, and Keith slowly makes his way into the spot. 

“Lance told me something the other day,” Allura starts, looking straight ahead of her instead of at Keith. “He said you don’t like soulmates.”

“I never said that,” Keith defends, only for Keith to rethink this. “Wait, why would he say that?” _And why would he be talking about me in the first place?_

“It was when you were out sick. I think he thought it had something to do with why you weren't answering his messages, since he has a tendency to talk about soulmates,” Allura shrugs with an eye roll. “Anyway, I was just going to ask why you thought they were stupid.” 

“I don’t think they’re stupid… I just wish it didn’t affect so many decisions in people’s lives.” _I wish it didn’t change my life in more ways than one, even with me not having one._

“I get that,” Allura nods, keying gently at the piano in front of her. “Sometimes I think if it weren’t for soulmates I’d still have my dad around.” 

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, voice as quiet as her fingers lightly making their way through a series of notes. 

“Well, my parents weren’t soulmates,” Allura begins, then lets her fingers come to an abrupt stop. “I don’t know if you heard about this, but my dad was Alfor Altea. He was in the news a couple years back because… well, he knew his soulmate. They were best friends, actually. They went to college together, started their own businesses at the same time… they were really close. But then one day my dad met my mom and had me, and later his soulmate met his wife and had a son. And I guess my dad thought that was that until his soulmate just snapped one day and… killed him and my mom.” 

Keith’s face goes rigid as stone, while Allura picks up playing with a new vigor and Keith tries to find her eyes but almost wishes he hadn’t. They’re glassy and red rimmed, and he thinks that she’ll start crying at any moment so he rests a hand on her shoulder at an attempt in comfort. But she continues playing, and talks over it. 

“That’s why I moved here with Coran two years ago. I tried staying in New York but it was… well, there were just too many memories. But I still think about it everyday, ya know? Like if my parents would still be here if Zarkon didn’t resent them and feel… I don’t know, betrayed by my dad?” Allura strikes the keys violently, as if she doesn’t know any other way to rebuke the anger that’s surely taking up space in her heart, and Keith takes it as a sign to rest a hand over hers before she damages the old instrument. At this she sighs with deep exasperation, and offers him a face that looks thousands of years older than she actually is. He sees all the layers of pain she’s likely dealt with, and suddenly the familiarity of it all comes back to him, just as he confirms the guesses he’s made. “And as if it doesn’t get worse, I’ve met my soulmate, too. That’s why my hair is white.” 

She doesn’t have to say the next sentence she’s likely thinking, because by then Keith has recognized Allura from the news coverings of her and her family. Keith hadn’t thought much of it at the time, being a high schooler with his own problems to deal with, but now it comes to him in full-force and he realizes why the name Alfor Altea had stood out to him when Coran had mentioned it weeks ago. 

But now the news seemed almost freakish as Keith recalled old news headlines such as ‘Voltech Alumni and CEO of Altea Architecture Murdered by Soulmate- CEO of Daibazal Industries, Zarkon Daziad _’,_ and the context behind it sat even murkier at his stomach. Not only were Allura’s parents murdered by her dad’s soulmate, but Zarkon’s son was _her_ soulmate _._ It was an odd thing to see on _Good Morning America_ as a fifteen-year-old, but Keith could hardly imagine living through it. 

“Allura...,” Keith tries, gripping at Allura’s hand and trying his best to comfort her despite there not really being words for such a circumstance. He felt selfish almost, for wallowing in pity of himself over not having a soulmate when Allura likely _wished_ for such a thing. “I’m sorry I-”

“It’s okay,” she chokes, and then clears her throat quickly before continuing. “At first I wished soulmates really didn’t exist. I hated them. I hated the fact that the universe pretty much spat in my face _,_ and handed me Lotor as the cherry on top. But I think I’m past being angry and just… want to find the good in it.” 

“How?” Keith asks without really meaning to. But it’s almost impossible _not_ to ask, when Allura had tears streaming down her face and one of her hands was gripping at his tightly. How could she move past something that had torn so much from her? That had run its course through her life and broken every stem of peace in the process? 

“Well,” she starts. “I’m not sure. But I think if something like soulmates can make people like Lance happy then I- _we-_ can find healing in it, too. Right?” 

Keith hesitates as Allura begins to ginger at the piano keys again, a deep frown running through his face. “Right,” he agrees, though he’s thinking the opposite.

It was admirable for Allura to try to be optimistic when there was no opening for a brighter side to things, but Keith already knew how he felt about soulmates, and Allura’s story was just the nail in the coffin. Never mind what Lance had to say on the matter, the entire ordeal was all too much. And at that moment, Keith decided he wanted nothing to do with the matter. 

He decided right then, with Allura playing Lykke Li on her piano with tear streaks drying on her brown cheeks, that his initial judgment regarding soulmates were right- they took more than they gave, and the principles of it all were burdensome. And in the off chance that there was somehow somewhere out there chosen by the universe (or his ancestors) to be his other half, he didn’t want anything to do with them. 

\- -

After vows to curse soulmates and all things related were made under some thick and heavy vessel along Keith’s subconscious, where his thoughts resided under secrecy and with quiet reserve, the evening continued surprisingly without many hitches. Keyword: many. Which is to say, there was one particular bump in the road. However, it didn’t exactly come until late that night. 

After his heart-to-heart with Allura, the food she’d apparently ordered arrived, and Keith and his friends discussed ideas regarding what they’d found in the house and how it could tie into a video over pizza and wings. Much to his surprise, Allura was fairly talkative, as if she hadn’t just poured her heart out and spilled thick tears moments prior. But he came to the conclusion he ought not estimate her ability to recover from such moments quickly, and managed to pay attention to what his friends were saying rather than worrying over Allura. 

By the end of the evening, they’d all decided to make use of the creepy aura of Allura’s house and to set their music video’s theme as an escapade through a haunted mansion, while using one of Keith’s old songs titled _Ghost of Another You._ Costumes were under heavy scrutiny and debate, but eventually Nyma was able to convince the reminder of her band to dress up for the video, with the support of Romelle and Lance. 

“I want to see Allura in one of the gowns we found today!” Romelle cohered, and was quickly supported in this case. Apparently Nyma and Romelle had uncovered an entire closet full of clothes in varying sizes, and though they had no idea who they’d once belonged to, they were too nice to simply go ignored.

After a long day, Keith was just glad to finally find some common ground and eventually find his way home. 

Except, there was one pin that went untacked from the evening, and it presented itself once more on the ride home in Hunk’s van. 

Keith was quite honestly ready to fall asleep, despite it barely being seven at night, with his head resting on Pidge’s shoulder during the short ride home. Except, Lance insisted on playing the Madonna cassette he found under his seat and apparently couldn’t resist singing along to ‘Like a Prayer’ despite his friend’s protests. It proved to actually liven the mood of the vehicle, with Hunk eventually singing along at the chorus and Nyma joining in by the third verse. 

But while his friends were singing along to old eighties hits, Keith was facing that annoying sense of dejavu from earlier that, at this point, he found it downright disturbing. It was weird at first for Lance’s singing to ring off every angle of his mind when he’d sang with Allura, but now in the van it doubled in peculiarity. Even when Keith covered his ears, Lance’s voice was clear as day in his head and ran over everyone else’s. It was upsetting atop of being dumbfounding, and it left Keith trying to come up with several empty-handed answers as to why Lance’s voice reverated through him so coarse and strongly. 

By the time Keith was dropped off after Pidge and Nyma, Keith couldn’t escape Lance’s confusing singing fast enough. 

“Hey, Keith,” Lance calls from the passenger seat through his window after Keith has quickly scrambled out of the van with a speedy farewell and desperate need to exit. Keith turns on his heels upon hearing his name, and notes that now that Lance has finally stopped singing his head is oddly clear. “You’re wearing the gloves.”

Keith looks to his hands, and realizes he is in fact wearing the knitted gloves Lance had gifted him the previous Friday. When he looks back to Lance, he comes to see that he’s being offered this look that’s far too fond and soft for comfort, and… well, he doesn’t know what. Except that he needs to escape whatever the swirling in his gut is.“Bye, Lance.” 

As soon as he’s inside his house and has said a quick greeting to Shiro and Adam, who are on the couch watching what looks to be _Harry Potter_ or something equally complicated in plot, he books it to his room to try to figure things out. Which is obviously no small task, considering Keith is at a complete loss as to why Lance’s singing was bouncing around in his brain. Even now, as Keith dropped onto his bed helplessly, he could hear the sound of Lance’s voice flitting through his brain singing ‘Material Girl.’

After several minutes of struggling, and trying to scrub his brain of the noise (and failing), Keith decides to do some investigating. He wasn’t sure if it’d help with the confusing situation, but he assumed it likely couldn’t hurt. So he quickly made a beeline to his phone and made himself comfortable on his bed before desperately making his way to Lance’s TikTok account. 

He’d never looked through it much, save for inspecting the videos Lance insisted he check out, but now Keith was desperately scrolling to the very bottom of the account to find what he was praying was there. And, much to his surprise, it’s there- a video of Lance singing, marked four years ago in date. It’s shaky and poor quality, making it easy for Keith to ignore how different Lance looks before properly hitting puberty, but the video is still there in all the ways it’s essentially needed to test Keith’s theory. 

With shaky fingers, he presses play on the video and waits in anticipation for younger Lance to stop playing the opening notes on his keyboard and to finally start singing. Keith sits quietly, expecting him to hear the Adele song from the video making its way through the expanse of his brain like Lance’s singing had earlier, but it never does. He hears it, obviously, but it isn’t all-consuming or abrasive. In fact, what Keith hears tickling the back of his mind instead is Lance still singing Madonna. 

The revelation is odd enough to cause him to bite through his bottom lip and continue to go through Lance’s account in hopes to find more videos. They’re sparse, but he finds three more, with the most recent one being from two years ago. Each time he presses play, expecting for something to happen, but it never comes.

Eventually Madonna stops playing through Keith’s mind, and he’s able to think a bit more clearly to come up with another idea as to why he’s got Lance’s voice living in his head rent free- literally. 

**Lance ♡**

**Lance**

_What’s up_

**Are you home yet**

_Yeah, hunkers just dropped me off :)_

**Can you send me a voice note of you singing**

_Uhh_

_Why lol_

**Because.**

_Not the punctuation-_

_What do you even want me to sing?_

**Anything, it doesn’t matter**

_Hm, not weird at all_

_But okay, since you clearly like my singing so much_

  
  


Keith feels like he’s left waiting forever, with his phone gripped tightly in his hands as he impatiently awaits a response. But eventually it comes- Lance’s voice piercing through the back of his mind. It’s oddly quiet, singing a song Keith is pretty sure he’s heard on Nickelodeon once upon a time, but it’s there all the same. And what comes next makes Keith’s heart drop.

Just as Lance’s singing stops worming its way through his mind, he receives a voice note from Lance on iMessage and he nearly bites his tongue at what he hears upon pressing play. 

The voice note plays Lance’s singing just as requested, and it sounds exactly like the singing that was in Keith’s head only seconds ago, down to the very second.

“Fuck,” Keith says, dropping his phone on his bed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…,”

He paces around his room quickly, hands running through his hair quickly because _what the fuck_? 

He’s still pacing, scratching at his scalp desperately as if his nails can seep through his head and completely berid of that Lance that nags at the back of his head, when Shiro pokes his head through the door. 

“Hey Kira, just wanted to let you know if you’re hungry then-woah, what… hey, what’s wrong?” Shiro’s demeanor quickly shifts from casual to concerned in a millisecond upon seeing the troubled stature in his younger relative’s face and body language, and Keith tries to flatten his expression and attitude to something nonchalant. 

He doesn’t want to bring this up with Shiro because he’s not even sure what _this_ is. But he feels sick to his stomach, as though his intestines are brimming with bile, and before he knows it he’s tossing up word vomit with an admission he never thought he’d be uttering.

“I think I have a soulmate.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter, hopefully part two will be up soon! 
> 
> In the meantime, I might actually start working on some other fic ideas I’ve been holding onto for a while because as much as I’d like to post part two to this one sooner than later I just have too many ideas ajdndjn.
> 
> Here’s some fic ideas I’m planning to write soon, in case you’re curious:
> 
> -a part two to my first fic, ‘reminiscing of a life i had’ with black paladin lance and a minor case of amnesia  
> -high schooler au where Lance and Keith are popular video gamers online with secret identities  
> -fic where Keith and Lance are accidentally sent to an alternate dimension by Slav where they’re bounty hunters  
> -au where Keith was raised by the Galra and ends up having to free a certain blue paladin from being a Galra prisoner
> 
> Those are just the ideas that’ve been sitting in my little noggin for the past week but I (unfortunately) have plenty more ideas (free me from this klance hell).  
> Feel free to comment which you’d like to see/read first if any or just comment whatever you want :) I love reading comments and they really motivate me!  
> Anyway, thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far and please have a lovely day! Much love! xxx


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